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PECK’S BAD BOY 
WITH the COWBOYS 



BY HON. GEO. W. PECK 


Author of Peck's Bad Boy Abroad , 
Peck's Bad Boy •with the Circus, etc . 



Relating the Amusing Experiences and Laughable Inci¬ 
dents of this Strenuous American Boy and his Pa while 
among the Cowboys and Indians in the Far 'West. 
Exciting Hunts and Adventures mingled 
with Humorous Situations and Laugh 
Provoking Events. 


FULLY ILLUSTRATED 


THOMPSON & THOMAS 
CHICAGO 
19 0 7 














x- V\ c 






A 


} LJSMA8Yof CONGRESSj 
Two Cooies Received * 

SEP 3 190? 

I CoaynrW 9ntry 

Jan.12,14*7 

CLASS 4 XXc., No, 

COPY B. 


Copyright 1505 

BY 

JOSEPH B. BOWLES 


Copyright 1906 

BY 

JOSEPH B. BOWLES 


Copyright 1907 

BY 

THOMPSON & THOMAS 












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« « « 













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V* 


















Peck’s Bad Boy With the Cowboys. 






























CONTENTS. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Bad Boy and His Pa Go West to Hire an Outfit for 
a Wild West Show—Pa Plans to Be a Dead Ringer 
for Buffalo Bill and Lets His Hair and Whiskers Grow 
—They Visit an Indian Village—Pa Agrees to Earn 
His Spurs by Scalping an Indian and Killing a Grizzly 
Bear—The Result is Not Satisfactory. 13 

CHAPTER II. 

The Indian Chief Compels the Bad Boy’s Pa to Herd 
With the Squaws—He Shows Them How to Make Buck¬ 
wheat Cakes and is Kept Making Them a Week—He 
Talks to the Squaws About Women’s Rights and They 
Organize a Strike—The Strike is Put Down and the 
Indians Prepare to Burn Pa at the Stake. 32 

CHAPTER III. 

Pa Subdues the Indians With Phosphorus and an Electric 
Battery—We Visit a Ranch and Dine With the Cow¬ 
boys—Pa Tries His Hand at Roping a Steer With Dis¬ 
astrous Results . 51 


CHAPTER IV. 

The Bad Boy, His Pa and a Band of Cowboys Go in 
Search of a Live Dinosaurus That One of the Boys 
Said He Had Seen—The Expedition is Captured by a 
Gang of Train Robbers Who Hold Pa for a Ransom.... 70 


5 






«. 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER V. 

The Bad Boy and His Pa in Captivity—Held by the Train 
Robbers—The Bad Boy’s Idea of Bandit Life is Ex¬ 
ploded—Pa Tries to Persuade the Head of the Gang to 
Become a Financier But He Prefers Train Robbery and 
Puts Up a Good Argument. 86 

CHAPTER VI. 

Pa Plays Surgeon and Earns the Good Will of the Ban¬ 
dits—They Have a Banquet in a Cave—A Loving Cup 
Episode and Speeches—Pa is Made an Honorary Mem¬ 
ber of the Band and Pa and the Bad Boy are Allowed 
to Go Free Without Ransom.102 

CHAPTER VII. 

Pa and the Bad Boy Stop Over at a Lively Western Town 
and Pa Bucked a Faro Bank—Pa Buys Mining Stock 
in a Salted Mine—They Take Part in a Rabbit Drive 
and Pa Has an Experience.121 

CHAPTER VIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Pa Visit a Buffalo Ranch and Pa 
Pays for the Privilege of Killing a Buffalo But Doesn’t 
Accomplish His Purpose, Though Pa Claims He is a 
Mighty Hunter—He Hires a Herd of Buffaloes for 
the Show.137 


CHAPTER IX. 

The Bad Boy and His Pa Return to the Circus to Find 
They Have Been Quite Forgotten—The Fat Lady and 
the Bearded Woman Give Pa the Cold Shoulder—Pa 
Finally Makes Himself Recognized and Attends the last 
Performance of the Season.154 


6 







CONTENTS 


CHAPTER X. 

The Bad Boy Calls on the Old Groceryman and Gets Ac¬ 
quainted with His New Dog—Off Again to See Amer¬ 
ica .167 


CHAPTER XI. 

The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride He and Dad 


Took—They Sneak Out of Town.185 

CHAPTER XII. 

The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get so Gay— 
Dad’s Experience with the Peccaries .204 

CHAPTER XIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Trouble with a New 
Breakfast Food—Dad Rides a Bucking Broncho.221 

CHAPTER XIV. 


The Bad Boy and His Dad Return from Texas—The Boy 
Tells the Groceryman About the Excitement at San An¬ 
tonio ..238 


CHAPTER XV. 

The Bad Boy’s Joke with a Stuffed Rattlesnake—He Tells 
the Old Groceryman About His Dad’s Morbid Appetite. .252 

CHAPTER XVI. 

The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in Yellowstone 
Park and How Brave Dad Was.269 

CHAPTER XVII. 

The Bad Boy and the Groceryman Illustrate the Russia- 
Japanese War—The Bad Boy Tells About Dad’s Ef¬ 
forts to Raise Hair by the “Sunshine” Method.286 


















ILLUSTRATIONS. 


“Got Any Trailing Dogs?”.Frontispiece 

Pa Kicked the Dog.23 

The Grizzly Looked as Big as a Brewery Horse. 28 

They Gave Pa Three Cheers.35 

The Squaws Seemed to be Worshipping Pa. 39 

The Horse Stumbled, Throwing Pa Over His Head and 

Killing the Wolf . 47 

He Looked Like Moonlight on the Lake. 53 

The Chief’s Knees Knocked Together. 59 

Pa Only Touched the High Places.67 

A Boy Dinosaurus Reached Out His Neck and Picked 

Up a Steer. 75 

We Were Captured by the Curry’s Gang. 83 

Pa Told Them About the Wave of Reform.88 

I Say to the Engineer—“Charley, Turn Her Off and 

Stop Her” . 95 

One Day the Robbers Came Back From a Raid With 

Piles of Greenbacks .104 

Drank to the Health of Their Distinguished Guest.in 

The Robbers Guided Us in the Dark Through the Valley. 117 

The Pony Tossed Pa in the Air.129 

Pa Swung His Ax Handle.131 

Pa Was Alive to His Danger.144 

The Buffaloes Licked Pa’s Bald Head—Pa Began to Pray. 148 


9 





















ILLUSTRATIONS 


A Couple of Bouncers Took Pa by the Elbows and Fired 

Him Out.156 

“ Dog Does Kinder Act as Though He Had Something 

on His Mind” .171 

“Jerusalem, But You Are a Sight,” Said the Old Grocery- 

man .187 

Dad Said, “Good Shot, Hennery”. 192 

“ It Rained Bananas and the Dago Came Down on His 

Head ” .195 

“The Farmer Had Grabbed Hold of a Wire Sign Across 

the Street ” .198 

“Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me 

Was Not the Success You Expected”.201 

“ Dad Sat in the Parlor With a Widow Until the Porter 

Had to Tell Him to Cut it Out ”.207 

“I Got a Gambler to Look Cross at Dad”.211 

“ Dad Was Up On a Limb and the Wild Animals Were 

Jumping Up to Eat His Shoes”.215- 

“ Hennery, I Feel as Though Your Dad Was Not Long 

For This World” .223 

Dad Among the Cowboys. 227 

“Dad Began to Pose as a Regular Old Rough Rider”. ...231 

Dad On a Bucking Broncho.235 

“That’s a Prairie Dog From Texas”.241 

“ Dad Heard Something at Night and Rose Up in Bed”. .244 
“Dad Stepped On My Prairie Dog and Yelled Murder”. .247 

“We Left Under Escort of the Police”...249 

“ Arrest That Boy With the Rattlesnake,” Said the Gro- 

ceryman .257 

“Each Oyster Was As Big As a Pie Plate”.263 

Landed With His Head in a Basket of Strictly Fresh Eggs.272 


10 



















ILLUSTRATIONS 


“ You Ought to Have Seen Dad’s Short Legs Carry 

Him to a Tree”.278 

“ Studied the Bears for Awhile and Let Dad Yell for 

the Police” .282 

Come to Present Arms .288 

When the Fireworks Went Off in the Grocery.293 

“ Dad Said if Rockefeller Could Raise Hair by the Sun¬ 
shine Method, He Could” .299 


11 










Peck’s Bad Boy with the Cowboys. 


CHAPTER I. 

The Bad Boy and His Pa Go West—Pa 
Plans to Be a Dead Ringer for Buffalo 
Bill—They Visit an Indian Reservation 
and Pa Has an Encounter with a Grizzly 
Bear. 

Well, I never saw such a change in a man 
as there has been in pa, since the circus man¬ 
agers gave him a commission to go out west 
and hire an entire outfit for a wild west show, 
regardless of cost, to be a part of our show 
next year. He acts like he was a duke, 
searching for a rich wife. No country poii-* 
tician that never had been out of his own 


13 



PECK’S BAD BOY 

county, appointed minister to England, could 
put on more style than pa does. 

The first day after the show left us at St. 
Louis we felt pretty bum, ’cause we missed 
the smell of the canvas, and the sawdust, and 
the animals, and the indescribable odor that 
goes with a circus. We missed the perform¬ 
ers, the band, the surging crowds around the 
ticket wagon, and the cheers from the seats. 
It almost seemed as though there had been a 
funeral in the family, and we were sitting 
around in the cold parlor waiting for the 
lawyers to read the will. But in a couple of 
days pa got busy, and he hired a young In¬ 
dian who was a graduate of Carlisle, as an 
interpreter, and a reformed cowboy, to go 
with us to the cattle ranges, and an old big 
game hunter who was to accompany us to 

14 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

the places where we could find buffalo and 
grizzly bears. Pa chartered a car to take us 
west, and after the Indian and the cowboy 
and the hunter got sobered up, on the train, 
and got the St. Louis ptomaine poison out of 
their systems, and we were going through 
Kansas, pa got us all into the smoking com¬ 
partment. 

“Gentlemen,” he said, “I want you to 
know that this expedition is backed by the 
wealth of the circus world, and that there is 
nothing cheap about it. We are to hire, re¬ 
gardless of expense, the best riders, the best 
cattle ropers, and the best everything that 
goes with a wild west show. We all know 
that Buffalo Bill must soon, in the nature of 
things, pass away as a feature for shows, and 
I have been selected to take the place of Bill 
15 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

in the circus world, when he cashes in. You 
may have noticed that I have been letting 
my hair and mustache and chin whiskers 
grow the last few months, so that next year 
I will be a dead ringer for Bill. All I want 
is some experience as a hero of the plains, 
as a scout, a hunter, a scalper of Indians, a 
rider of wild horses, and a few things like 
that, and next year you will see me ride a 
white horse up in front of the press seats in 
our show, take off my broad-brimmed hat, 
and wave it at the crowned heads in the 
boxes, give the spurs to my horse, and ride 
away like a cavalier, and the show will go 
on, to the music of hand-clapping from the 
assembled thousands, see?” 

The cowboy looked at pa’s stomach, and 
said: “Well, Mr. Man, if you are going to 
16 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

blow yourself for a second Buffalo Bill, I 
am with you, at the salary agreed upon, till 
the cows come home, but you have got to 
show me that you have got no yellow streak, 
when it comes to cutting out steers that are 
wild and carry long horns, and you’ve got to 
rope ’em, and tie ’em all alone, and hold up 
your hands for judgment, in ten seconds.” 

Pa said he could learn to do it in a week, 
but the cowman said: “Not on your life.” 
The hunter said he would be ready to call 
pa B. Bill when he could stand up straight, 
with the paws of a full-grown grizzly on 
each of his shoulders, and its face in front 
of pa’s, if pa had the nerve to pull a knife 
and disembowel the bear, and skin him 
without help. Pa said that would be right 
into his hand, ’cause he use to work in a 
17 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

slaughter house when he was a boy, and he 
had waded in gore. 

The Indian said he would be ready to sa¬ 
lute pa as Buffalo Bill the Second, when pa 
had an Indian’s left hand tangled in his 
hair, and a knife in his right hand ready to 
scalp him, if pa would look the Indian in 
the eye and hypnotize the red man so he 
would drop the hair and the knife, turn his 
back on pa, and invite him to his wig¬ 
wam as a guest. Pa said all he asked was a 
chance to look into the very soul of the worst 
Indian that ever stole a horse, and he would 
make Mr. Indian penuk, and beg for mercy. 

And we all agreed that pa was a wonder, 
and then they got out a pack of cards and 
played draw poker awhile. Pa had bad 
luck, and when the Indian bet a lot of chips, 
18 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

pa began to look the Indian in the eye, and 
the Indian began to quail, and pa put up all 
the chips he had, to bluff the Indian, but pa 
took his eye off the Indian a minute too 
quick, and the Indian quit quailing, and bet 
pa $70, and pa called him, and the Indian 
had four deuces and pa had a full hand, 
and the Indian took the money. Pa said 
that comes of educating these confounded 
red devils, at the expense of the government, 
and then we all went to bed. 

The next morning we were at the station 
in the far west. We got off and started for 
the Indian reservation where the Carlisle In¬ 
dian originally came from, and where we 
were to hire Indians for our show. We rode 
about 40 miles in hired buckboards, and just 
as the sun was setting there appeared in the 
19 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

distance an Indian camp, where smoke as¬ 
cended from tepees, tents and bark houses. 
When the civilized Carlisle Indian jumped 
up on the front seat of the buckboard and 
gave a series of yells that caused pa’s bald 
head to look ashamed that it had no hair to 
stand on end, there came a war whoop from 
the camp, Indians, squaws, dogs, and every¬ 
thing that contained a noise letting out yells 
that made me sick. The Carlisle Indian be¬ 
gan to pull off his citizen clothes of civiliza¬ 
tion, and when the horses ran down to the 
camp in front of the chief’s tent the tribes 
welcomed the Carlisle prodigal son, who 
had removed every evidence of civilization, 
except a pair of football pants, and thus he 
reinstated himself with the affections of his 
race, who hugged him for joy. 




WITH THE COWBOYS 

Pa and the rest of us sat in the buckboard 
while the Indians began to feast on some¬ 
thing cooking in a shack. We looked at each 
other for awhile, not daring to make a noise 
for fear it would offend the Indians. Pretty 
soon an old chief came and called pa the 
Great Father, and called me a pup, and he 
invited us to come into camp and partake of 
the feast. 

Well, we were hungry, and the meat cer¬ 
tainly tasted good, and the Carlisle civilized 
Indian had no business to say it was dog, 
’cause no man likes to smoke his pipe of 
peace with strong tobacco in a strange pipe, 
and feel that his stomach is full of dog meat. 
But we didn’t die, and all the evening the In¬ 
dians talked about the brave great father. 

It seemed that they were not going to take 
21 


0 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

much stock in pa’s bravery until they had 
tried him out in Indian fashion. We were 
standing in the moonlight surrounded by In¬ 
dians, and pa had been questioned as to his 
bravery, and pa said he was brave like 
Roosevelt, and he swelled out his chest and 
looked the part, when the chief said, point¬ 
ing to a savage, snarling dog that was smell¬ 
ing of pa: “Brave man, kick a dog!” 

We all told pa that the Indian wanted 
pa to give an exhibition of his bravery by 
kicking the dog, and while I could see that 
pa had rather hire a man to kick the dog, 
he knew that it was up to him to show his 
mettle, so he hauled off and gave the dog 
a kick near the tail, which seemed to tele¬ 
scope the dog’s spine together, and the dog 
landed far away. The chief patted pa on 


22 






/ 



Pa Kicked the Dog. 









PECK’S BAD BOY 


the shoulder and said: “Great Father, bully 
good hero. Tomorrow he kill a grizzly,” 
and then they let us go to bed, after pa had 
explained that if everything went well he 
would hire all the chiefs and young braves 
for his show. 

After we got to bed pa said he was al¬ 
most sorry he told the chief that he would 
take a grizzly bear by one ear, and cuff the 
other ear with the flat of his hand, as he 
didn’t know but a wild grizzly would look 
upon such conduct differently from our old 
bear in the show used to. Any person 
around the show could slap his face, or 
cuff him, or kick him in the slats, and he 
would act as though they were doing him 
a favor. The big game hunter told pa that 
there was no danger in hunting a grizzly, 


24 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

as you could scare him away, if you didn’t 
want to have any truck with him, by wav¬ 
ing your hat and yelling: “Git, Ephraim.” 
He said no grizzly would stand around a 
minute if you yelled at him. Pa made up 
his mind he would yell all right enough, if 
we came up to a grizzly. 

Well, we didn’t sleep much that night, 
’cause pa kept practicing on his yell to 
scare a grizzly, for fear he would forget the 
words, and when they called us in the morn¬ 
ing pa was the poorest imitation of a man 
going out to test his bravery that I ever saw. 
While the Indians were getting ready to go 
out to a canyon and turn the dogs loose to 
round up a bear, pa got a big knife and 
was sharpening it, so he could rip the bear 
from Genesis to Revelations. After break- 
25 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

fast the chief and the Carlisle Indian, and 
the big game hunter, and the cowman and 
I went out about two miles, to the mouth 
of the canyon, where it was very narrow, 
and they stationed pa by a big rock, right 
where the bear would have to pass; the rest 
of us got up on a bench of the canyon, 
where we could see pa be brave, and the 
young Indians went up about a mile, and 
started the dogs. Well, pa was a sight, as 
he stood there waiting for the bear, so he 
could cuff its ears, and rip it open, right 
in sight of the chief, and skin it; but he 
was nervous, and we could see that his legs 
trembled when he heard the dogs bark up 
the canyon. I yelled to pa to think of 
Teddy Roosevelt, and Daniel Boone, and 
Buffalo Bill, and set his teeth so they 
26 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

would not chatter and scare the bear, but 
pa yelled back: “Never you mind, I will 
kill my bear in my own way, but you can 
make up your mind to have bear meat for 
supper.” 

Pretty soon the big game hunter said: 
“There he comes, sure’s you are born,” and 
we looked up the canyon, and there was 
something coming, as big as a load of hay, 
with bristles sticking up a foot high on its 
back, and its mouth was open, and it was 
loping right towards pa. Gee, but I was 
proud of pa, to see him sharpening his knife 
on his boot leg, but when the great animal 
got within about a block of pa, the great 
father seemed to have a streak of yellow, 
for he dropped his knife and yelled: “Git, 
Ephraim,” in a loud voice, but Ephraim 
27 


M ’ • 


* 



The Grizzly Looked as Big as a Brewery Horse 









WITH THE COWBOYS 

came right along, and didn’t git with any 
great suddenness. When the bear got with¬ 
in about four doors of pa, he saw the great 
father, and stood up on his hind legs, and 
looked as big as a brewery horse, and he 
opened his mouth and said: “Woof,” just 
like that. That was too much for* my pa, 
who began to shuck his clothes, and then 
started on a run towards the mouth of the 
canyon. The bear looked around as much 
as to say: “Well, what do you think of 
that?” and we watched pa sprinting toward 
the Indian camp like a scared wolf. 

The big game hunter put a few bullets 
in the bear where they would do the most 
good, and killed it, and we went down in 
the canyon and skinned it, and took the meat 
and hide to camp, where we found pa under 
29 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


a bed in a squaw’s tepee, making grand hail¬ 
ing signs of distress, and trying to tell them 
about his killing a bear by letting it run after 
him, so it would tire itself out and die of 
heart failure. 

When we found pa he had come out from 
under the bed, and was looking at the hide 
of the bear to find the place where he hit 
it with the knife, as he said he could see 
that the only chance for him to kill the bear 
was to throw the knife at it from a distance, 
’cause the bear was four times as big as any 
bear he had ever killed. Pa took out a 
handful of gold pieces and distributed them 
among the Indians, and told the Carlisle In¬ 
dian to explain to the tribe that the great 
father had killed the bear by hypnotism, and 
they all believed it except the chief, who 
30 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

seemed skeptical, for he said: “Great father 
heap brave man like a sheep. Go play 
seven-up with squaws.” Poor pa wasn’t al¬ 
lowed to talk with the men all day, ’cause 
the old chief said he was a squaw man. Pa 
says they don’t seem to realize that a man 
can be brave unless he allows himself to be 
killed by a bear, but he says he will show 
them that a great mind and a great head is 
better in the end than foolishness. Now they 
want pa to run a footrace with the young 
Indians, as the record he made getting to 
camp ahead of the bear is better than any 
time ever made on the reservation. 


31 


CHAPTER II. 

Indian Chief Compels Bad Boy’s Pa to 
Herd with the Squaws—He Shows Them 
How to Make Buckwheat Cakes and Is 
Kept Making Them a Week—He Talks 
to the Squaws About Women’s Rights 
and They Organize a Strike—Pa’s Suc¬ 
cess in a Wolf Hunt—The Strike is Put 
Down and the Indians Prepare to Burn 
Pa at the Stake. 

Since pa’s experience in trying to kill a 
grizzly by making the animal chase him and 
die of heart disease, the chief has made pa 
herd with the squaws, until he can prove 
that he is a brave man by some daring deed. 
The Indians wouldn’t speak to him for a 
long time, so he decided to teach the squaws 
how to keep house in a civilized manner, 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

and he began by trying to show them how 
to make buckwheat pancakes, so they could 
furnish something for the Indians to eat that 
does not have to be dug out of a tin can, 
which they draw from the Indian agent. Pa 
found a sack of buckwheat flour and some 
baking powder, and mixed up some batter, 
and while he was fixing a piece of tin roof 
for a griddle, the squaws drank the pancake 
batter raw, and it made them all sick, and 
the chief was going to have pa burned at 
the stake, when the Carlisle Indian who had 
eaten pancakes at college when he was train¬ 
ing with the football team, told the chief to 
let up on pa and he would give them some¬ 
thing to eat that was good, so pa mixed some 
more batter and when the buckwheat pan¬ 
cakes began to bake, and the odor spread 
33 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

around among the Indians, they all gathered 
around, and the way they ate pancakes would 
paralyze you. They got some axle grease 
to spread on the pancakes, and fought with 
each other to get the pancakes, and they kept 
pa baking pancakes all day and nearly all 
night, and then the squaws began to feel bet¬ 
ter, and pa had to bake pancakes for them, 
and when the flour gave out the chief sent 
to the agency for more, and for a week pa 
did nothing but make pancakes, but finally 
the whole tribe got sick, and pa had to pre¬ 
scribe raw beef for them, and they began to 
get better, and then they wanted pa to go 
on a coyote hunt, and kill a kiota, which is 
a wolf, by jumping off his horse and taking 
the wolf by the neck and choking it to death. 
Pa said he killed a tom cat that way once, 
34 


* 




They Gave Pa Three Cheers 


♦ 




r -Wy-wain. 11 











































































. 




















































• • 

• -.• .v ' • . .. 


■ 


T 

: : - ■ r 

.• 


'Dad said if Rockefeller could raise hair by the swnshme method, 
he could/' 

































V 

ife 


















WITH THE COWBOYS 

and he could kill any wolf that ever walked,, 
so they arranged the hunt. Before we went 
on the hunt pa sent to Cheyenne for two 
dozen little folding baby trundlers for the 
squaws to wheel the papooses in, ’cause he 
didn’t like to see them tie the children on 
their backs and carry them around. When 
the trundlers came pa showed the squaws 
how they worked, by putting a papoose in 
one of the baby wagons, and pushing it 
around the camp, and by gosh, if they didn’t 
make pa wheel all the babies in the tribe, 
for two days, and the Indians turned out and 
gave the great father three cheers, but when 
the squaws wanted to get in the wagons and 
be wheeled around, pa kicked. After teach¬ 
ing the squaws how to put the children in 
the wagons and work them, we went off on 
37 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

the hunt, and when we came back every 
squaw had her papoose in a baby wagon, but 
instead of wheeling the wagon in civilized 
fashion, they slung the wagons, babies and 
all, on their backs, and carried the whole 
thing on their backs. Gee, but that made pa 
hot. He says you can’t do anything with a 
race of people that haven’t got brain enough 
to imitate. He says monkeys would know 
better than to carry baby wagons on their 
backs. I never thought that Indians could 
be jealous, but they are terrors when the 
jealousy germ begins to work. There is no 
doubt but that the squaws got to thinking a 
great deal of pa, ’cause he talked with them, 
through the Carlisle Indian for an inter¬ 
preter, and as he sat on a camp chair and 
looked like a great white god with a red 
38 



The Squaws Seemed to Be Worshiping Pa. 





















PECK’S BAD BOY 

nose, and they gathered around him, and he 
told them stories of women in the east, and 
how they dressed and went to parties, and 
how the men worked for them that they 
might live in luxury, and how they had serv¬ 
ants to do their cooking, and maids to dress 
them, and carriages to ride in, and lovers to 
slave for them, it is not to be wondered at 
that those poor creatures, who never had a 
kind word from their masters, and who were 
looked upon as lower than the dogs, should 
look upon pa as the grandest man that ever 
lived, and I noticed, myself, that they gave 
him glances of love and admiration, and 
when they would snuggle up closer to pa, 
he would put his hand on their heads and 
pat their hair, and look into their big black 
eyes sort of tender, and pinch their brown 
40 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

cheeks, and chuck them under the chin, and 
tell them that the great father loved them, 
and that he hoped the time would come when 
every good Indian would look upon his 
squaw, the mother of his children, as the 
greatest boon that could be given to man, 
and that the now despised squaw would be 
placed on a pedestal and honored by all, and 
worshiped as she ought to be. That was all 
right enough, but pa never ought to have 
gone so far as to advise them to strike for 
their rights, and refuse to be longer looked 
upon as beasts of burden, but demand recog¬ 
nition as equals, and refuse longer to be 
drudges. I could see that trouble was brew¬ 
ing, for every squaw insisted on kissing the 
great father, and then there came a baneful 
light in their eyes, and they drew away to-- 


4i 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

gether and began to talk excitedly, and pa 
said he guessed they were organizing a wo¬ 
man’s rights union. Pa and the Carlisle In¬ 
dian and I went out for a stroll in the forest, 
and were gone an hour or so, and pa got 
tired and he and I went back to camp be¬ 
fore the Carlisle Indian did, and when we 
got in sight of camp we could see by the 
commotion that the squaw strike was on, 
’cause the squaws were talking loud, and the 
Ittdians were getting their guns and it looked 
like war. We crawled up close, and the 
squaws drew butcher knives and made a rush 
on the Indians, and the Indians weakened, 
and the squaws tied their hands and feet, 
and then the squaws had a war dance, and 
they told the Indians that they were now 
the bosses, and would hereafter run the af- 
42 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

fairs of the tribe, like white women did, and 
that the Indians must do the cooking, and 
do the work, while the squaws sat in the tents 
to be waited on, and that they would never 
do another stroke of hard work that an In¬ 
dian could do. I never saw such a lot of 
scared Indians in my life, but when the 
squaws put the butcher knives to their necks, 
and looked fierce, and grabbed the Indians 
by the hair and looked as though they were 
going to scalp them, the Indians agreed to 
do all .the work, and just then pa and I came 
up, and the squaws hailed pa as their deliv¬ 
erer, and they fell on his neck and hugged 
him, and they placed a camp chair for him, 
and put a tiger skin cloak around him, and 
a necklace of elk’s teeth around his neck, and 
all kneeled down and seemed to be worship- 
43 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ing him, while the Indians looked on in the 
most hopeless manner, and then the Carlisle 
Indian came and said the squaws had made 
pa the chief squaw of the tribe, and that the 
Indians had agreed to do the work hereafter. 
Pa counted the elk teeth on his necklace and 
figured that he could sell them for two dol¬ 
lars apiece, and pay the expenses of the trip. 
Then the squaws cut the strings that bound 
the Indians, and set them to work cooking 
dinner, and it was awful the way the spirit 
seemed to be knocked out of the Indians, 
just by a little rising on the part of the down¬ 
trodden squaws. The Indians cooked din¬ 
ner, and waited on the squaws, and pa and 
all of us whites, and after dinner the squaws 
ordered the horses and the squaws and us 
whites went off on a wolf hunt, with the 
44 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

dogs, where pa was to show his bravery to 
the squaws instead of the Indians. The 
squaws gave pa the old chief’s horse, and 
the best one in the tribe, and leaving the 
chief to wash the dishes, and the Indians 
to clean up the camp, and clean some fish 
for supper, the victorious squaws with pa at 
the head, and the rest of us whites on ponies, 
went out on the mesa and turned the dogs 
loose, and pretty soon they were after a wolf 
and pa led out ahead on his racing pony, 
cheered by the yells of the squaws, and it 
was a fine race for about two miles. Pa and 
the cowboy and the big game hunter and I 
got ahead of the squaws, and after awhile 
we got up pretty near to the wolf, and the 
big game hunter said to pa: “Now, old man, 
is your chance to make yourself solid with 
45 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

the squaws. We will hold back and when 
the dogs get the wolf surrounded you rush 
in and kill him or your name’s Dennis.” Pa 
said: “You watch my smoke, and see me 
eat that wolf alive.” So we held up our 
horses, and let pa go ahead. He rode up to 
the wolf, and I never saw a man with such 
luck as pa had. Just as he got near the wolf 
and the animal showed his teeth, pa tried to 
steer his horse away from the savage ani¬ 
mal, but the horse stumbled in a prairie dog 
hole, and fell right on top of the wolf, crush¬ 
ing the life out of the animal, and throw¬ 
ing pa over his head. Pa was stunned, but 
he soon came to, and when he realized that 
the wolf was dead, he grabbed the animal 
by the neck with one hand, and by the lower 
jaw with the other, and held on to it till the 



© 

£ 




Horse Stumbled, Throwing Pa Over His Head and Killing the Wolf- 


















PECK’S BAD BOY 

crowd came up, and when the squaws saw 
that pa had killed the biggest wolf ever seen 
on the reservation, by rushing in single 
handed and choking the savage animal to 
death, they gave pa an ovation that was 
enough to turn the head of any man. Us 
white fellows knew that pa couldn’t have 
been hired to go near that wolf until the 
horse fell on it and killed it, but we wanted 
to give pa a reputation for bravery, and so 
we let the squaws compliment pa and hug 
him, and make him think he was a holy ter¬ 
ror. So they tied the wolf on the saddle in 
front of pa, and we all went back to camp, 
the squaws shouting for pa, and telling the In¬ 
dians how the great white father had strangled 
the father of all wolves, and then the In¬ 
dians served the fish supper, and all looked 
48 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

as though there had been a bloodless revolu¬ 
tion, and that the squaws were in charge of 
the government, and pa was “it,” but I could 
see the Carlisle Indian whispering to the In¬ 
dians, and it seemed to me I could see signs 
of an uprising, and when the Indians had 
the supper dishes washed, and all seemed 
going right, and the squaws were rejoicing 
at being emancipated, just as the sun was 
setting, every Indian pulled out a bull whip 
and began to lash the squaws to their tents, 
and some young braves grabbed pa and re¬ 
moved the leopard skin cloak, and the elk’s 
teeth necklace, and tied his hands and feet, 
and carried him into a circle made by the 
Indians. I asked the Carlisle Indian what 
was the matter, and he said, pointing to some 
wood that had been piled at the roots of a 
49 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


tree: “The great white father is going to 
be tried for inciting a rebellion among the 
squaws, and the chances are that before the 
sun shall rise tomorrow your old dad will 
be broiled, fricasseed and baked to a turn.” 
I went up to pa and said: “Gee, dad, but 
they are going to burn you at the stake,” and 
pa called the cowboy, and told him to ride 
to the military post and ask for a detail of 
soldiers to hurry up and put a stop to it, and 
then pa said to me: “Hennery, it may look 
as though I was in a tight place, but I place 
my trust in the squaws and soldiers,” and pa 
rolled over to take a nap. 




CHAPTER III. 

How the Old Man Subdued the Indians with 
an Electric Battery and Phosphorus—He 
Tries His Hand at Roping a Steer—The 
Disastrous Result. 

Gee, but I thought pa was all in when 
I closed by last letter, when the Indians had 
him bound on a board, and had lighted a 
fire, and were just going to broil him. Jeal¬ 
ousy is bad enough in a white man, but when 
an Indian gets jealous of his squaw there is 
going to be something doing, and when a 
whole tribe gets jealous of one old man, 
’cause he has taught the squaws to be inde¬ 
pendent, and rise up as one man against the 
tyranny of their husbands, that white man is 
5i 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

not safe, and as pa lay there, waiting for the 
fire to get hot enough for them to lay him 
on the coals, I felt almost like crying, ’cause 
I didn’t want to take pa’s remains back home 
so scorched that they wouldn’t be an orna¬ 
ment to society, so I went up to pa’s couch 
to get his instructions as to our future course, 
when he should be all in. 

I said, “Pa, this is the most serious case 
you have yet mixed up in. O, wimmen, how 
you do ruin men who put their trust in you.” 

Pa winked at me, and said: 

“Never you mind me, Hennery. I will 
come out of this scrape and have all the In¬ 
dians on their knees in less than an hour, 
begging my pardon,” and then pa whispered 
to me, and I went to pa’s valise and got an 
electric battery and put it in pa’s pocket and 



He Looked Like Moonlight on the Lake, 










WITH THE COWBOYS 

scattered copper wires all around pa’s body, 
and fixed it so pa could touch a button and 
turn on a charge of electricity that would 
paralyze an elephant, and then I got some 
matches and took the phosphorus off and put 
it all over pa’s face and hands and clothes, 
and as it became dark and the phosphorus 
began to shine, pa was a sight. He looked 
like moonlight on the lake, and I got the 
cowboy and the big game hunter and the 
educated Indian to get down on their knees 
around pa, and chant something that would 
sound terrible to the Indians. The only 
thing in the way of a chant that all of them 
could chant was the football tune, “There’ll 
Be a Hot Time in the Old Town Tonight,” 
and we were whooping it up over pa’s illumi¬ 
nated remains when the Indians came out 
55 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


to put pa on the fire, and when they saw 
the phosphorescent glow all over him, and 
his face looking as though he was at peace 
with all the world, and ~us whites on our 
knees, making motions and singing that hot 
dirge, they all turned pale, and were scared, 
and they fell back reverently, and gazed 
fixedly at poor pa, who was winking at U9, 
and whispering to us to keep it up, and we 
did. 

The old chief was the first to recover, and 
he saw that something had to be done pretty 
quick, so he talked Indian to some of the 
braves, and I slipped away and put some 
phosphorus all over a squaw, and she looked 
like a lightning bug, and told her to go and 
fall on pa’s remains and yell murder. The 
Indians had started to grab pa and put him 

56 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

on the fire when pa turned on the battery 
and the big chief got a dose big enough for 
a whole flock of Indians, and all who touched 
pa got a shock, and they all fell back and 
got on their knees, and just then the squaw 
with the phosphorus on her system came run¬ 
ning out, and she fell across pa’s remains, 
and she shone so you could read fine print 
by the light she gave, and that settled it with 
the tribe, ’cause they all laid down flat and 
were at pa’s mercy. Pa pushed the illumi¬ 
nated squaw away, and went around and put 
his foot on the neck of each Indian, in token 
of his absolute mastery over them, and then 
he bade them arise, and he told them he had 
only done these things to show them the 
power of the great father over his children, 
and now he would reveal to them his object 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

in coming amongst them, and that was to 
engage 20 of the best Indians, and 20 of the 
best squaws, to join our great show, at an 
enormous salary, and be ready in two weeks 
to take the road. The Indians were de¬ 
lighted, and began to quarrel about who 
should go with the show, and to quiet them 
pa said he wanted to shake hands with all 
of them, and they lined up, and pa took the 
strongest wire attached to the battery in his 
pistol pocket, and let it run up under his 
coat and down his sleeve, into his right hand, 
and that was the way he shook hands with 
them. I thought I would die laughing. Pa 
took a position like a president at a New 
Year’s reception, and shook hands with the 
tribe one at a time. The old chief came 
first, and pa grasped his hand tight, and the 
58 




V 












The Chief’s Knees Knocked Together. 










PECK’S BAD BOY 

chief stood on his toes and his knees knocked 
together, his teeth chattered, and he danced 
a can can while pa held on to his hand and 
squeezed, but he finally let go and the chief 
wiped his hand on a dog, and the dog got 
some of the electricity and ki yied to beat 
the band. Then pa shook hands with every¬ 
body, and they all went through the same 
kind of performance, and were scared silly 
at the supernatural power pa seemed to have. 
The squaws seemed to get more electricity 
than the buck Indians, ’cause pa squeezed 
harder, and the way they danced and cut 
up didoes would make you think they 
had been drinking. Finally pa touched 
them all with his magic wand, and then they 
prepared a feast and celebrated their en¬ 
gagement to go with the circus, and we 
60 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

packed up and got ready to go to a cattle 
round up the next day at a ranch outside the 
Indian reservation, where pa was to engage 
some cowboys for the show. As we left the 
headquarters on the reservation the next 
morning all the Indians went with us for a 
few miles, cheering us, and pa waved his 
hands to them, and said, “bless you, me chil¬ 
dren,” and looked so wise, and so good, and 
great that I was proud of him. The squaws 
threw kisses at pa > and when we had left 
them, and had got out of sight, pa said, 
“Those Indians will give the squaws a wal¬ 
loping when they get back to camp, but who 
can blame them for falling in love with the 
great father?” and then pa winked, and put 
spurs to his pony and we rode across the 
mesa, looking for other worlds to conquer. 

61 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

On the way to the ranch where we were 
to meet the cowboys and engage enough to 
make the show a success, the cowboy pa had 
along told pa that it might be easy enough 
to fool Indians with the great father dodge, 
and ithe electric battery, and all that, but 
when he struck a mess of cowboys he would 
find a different proposition, ’cause he couldn’t 
fool cowboys a little bit. He said if pa was 
going -to hire cowboys, he had got to be a 
cowboy himself, and if he couldn’t rope 
steer 9 he would have to learn, ’cause cow¬ 
boys, if they were to be led in the show by 
pa, would want him to be prepared to rope 
anything that had four feet. Pa said while 
he didn’t claim to be an expert, he had done 
some roping, and could throw a lasso, and 
while he didn’t always catch them by the 
62 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

feet, when he tried to, he got the rope over 
them somewhere, and if the horse he rode 
knew its business he ultimately got his steer, 
and he would be willing to show the boys 
what he could do. 

We got to the cow camp in time for din¬ 
ner, and our cowboy introduced pa to the 
cowboys around the chuck wagon, and told 
them pa was an old cowboy who had trav¬ 
eled the Texas trail years ago, and was one 
of the best horsemen in the business, a man¬ 
ager of a show that was adding a wild west 
department and wanted to hire 40 or more 
of the best ropers and riders, at large sal¬ 
aries, to join the show, and that pa consid¬ 
ered himself the legitimate successor of Buf¬ 
falo Bill, and money was no object. Well, 
the boys were tickled to meet pa, and some 

63 


PECK'S BAD BOY 


said they had heard of him when he was 
roping cattle on the frontier, and that tickled 
pa, and they smoked cigarettes, and finally 
saddled up and began to brand calves and 
rope cattle to get them where they belonged, 
each different brand of cattle being driven 
off in a different direction, and we had the 
most interesting free show of bucking horses 
and roping cattle I ever saw. Pa watched 
the boys work for a long time, and compli¬ 
mented them, or criticised them for some 
error, until the crazy spirit seemed to get 
into him, and he thought he could do it as 
well as any of the boys, and he told our cow¬ 
boy that whenever the boys got tired he 
would like to get on a buckskin pony that 
one of the men was riding, and show that 
while a lPtle out of practice he could stand 

64 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

a steer on its head, and get off his horse and 
tie the animal in a few seconds beyond the 
record time. 

I told pa he better hire a man to do it 
for him, but he said, “Hennery, here is where 
your pa has got to make good, or these cow¬ 
boys won’t affiliate. You take my watch and 
roll, ‘cause no one can tell where a fellow 
will land when he gets his steer,” and I took 
pa’s valuables and the boys brought up the 
buckskin horse, which smelled of pa and 
snorted, and didn’t seem to want pa to get 
on, but they held the horse by the bridle, 
and pa finally got himself on both sides of 
the horse, and took the lariat rope off the 
pommel of the saddle and began to handle 
it, kind of awkward, like a boy with a clothes¬ 
line. I didn’t like the way the cowboys 

65 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

winked around among themselves and guyed 
pa, and I told pa about it, and tried to get 
him to give it up, but he said, “When I get 
my steer tied, and stand with my foot on his 
neck, these winking cowboys will take off 
their hats to me all right. I am Long Horn 
Ike, from the Brazos, and you watch my 
smoke.” 

Well, the boys tightened up the cinch on 
pa’s saddle, and pointed out a rangy black 
steer in a bunch down on the flat, and told pa 
the game was to cut that steer out of the 
bunch and rope it, and tie it, and hold up 
his right hand for the time keeper to record 
it. Gee, but pa spurred the horse and rode 
into that bunch of cattle like a whirlwind, 
and I was proud of him, and he cut out the 
black steer all right, and rode up near it, 
66 



































% 






» 










* 


0 











' 


« 



















Pa Only Touched the High Places, 




















PECK’S BAD BOY 

and swung his lariat, and sent it whizzing 
through the air, and the noose went out over 
the head and neck and fore feet of the steer, 
and the horse stopped and set itself back on 
its haunches, and the rope got around the 
belly of the steer, and when the rope became 
taut, and the steer ought to have been turned 
bottom- side up, the cinch of pa’s saddle 
broke, the saddle came off with pa hugging his 
legs around it, and the black steer started due 
west for Texas, galloping and bellowing, and 
you couldn’t see pa and the saddle for the 
dust they made following the steer. If pa 
had let go of the saddle, he would have 
stopped, but he hung to it, and the rope was 
tied to the saddle. The buckskin horse, re¬ 
lieved of the saddle, looked around at the 
cowboys as much as to say, “wouldn’t that 
68 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

skin you,” and went to grazing, the other 
cattle looked on as though they would say. 
“Another tenderfoot gone wrong,” and as 
the black steer and pa and the saddle went 
over a hill, pa only touching the high places, 
the boss cowboy said, “Come on and help 
head off the steer, and send a wagon to bring 
back the remains of Long Horn Ike from 
the Brazos,” and then I began to cry for pa. 




CHAPTER IV. 

Pa, the Bad Boy and a Band of Cowboys Go 
in Search of a Live Dinosaurus—The Ex¬ 
pedition is Captured by a Gang of Train 
Robbers and Pa is Held for Ransom. 

When I saw pa clinging to the saddle, 
which had got loose from the horse that he 
was riding when he lassooed the black steer 
around the belly, and the steer was running 
away, dragging pa and the saddle across the 
plains, I thought I never would see him 
alive again. But the cowboys said they 
would bring his remains back all right. 
When they rode away to capture the steer 
and release pa, I stopped crying and laid 
down under the chuck wagon with the dogs, 
70 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

to think over what I would do, alone in the 
world, and I must have fallen asleep, for 
the next thing I knew the dogs barked and 
woke me up, and I looked off to the south 
and the cowboys were coming back with 
pa’s remains on a buckboard. 

I went up to the wagon to see if pa looked 
natural, and he raised up, like a corpse 
coming to, and said: “Hennery, did you no¬ 
tice how I raped the black steer?” and I said: 
“Yes, pa, I saw the whole business, and saw 
you start south, chasing the steer, armed only 
with a saddle, and what is the news from 
Texas?” 

Pa said: “Look-a-here, I don’t want to 
hear any funny business. I delivered the 
goods all right, and if the cinch of the saddle 
had held out faithful to the end, I would 
7i 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

have tied the steer in record time, but man 
proposes and the rest you have to leave to luck. 
I was out of luck, that is all, but the ride 
I had across the prairie has given me some 
ideas about flying machines that will be 
worked into our show next year.” 

Pa got up off the buckboard and shook 
himself, and he was just as well and hearty 
as ever, and the cowboys got around him, 
and told him he was a wonder, and that Buf¬ 
falo Bill couldn’t hold a candle to him as 
an all-around rough rider and cowboy com¬ 
bined. So pa hired about a dozen of the 
cowboys to go with our show, and then we 
went into camp for the night, and the cow¬ 
boys told of a place about 20 miles away, 
where some scientists had a camp, where 
they were excavating to dig out petrified 
72 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

bone of animals supposed to be extinct, like 
the dinosaurus and the hoday, and pa 
wanted to go there and see about it, and the 
next day we took half a dozen of the cow¬ 
boys pa had hired, and we rode to the camp. 

Gee, but I never believed that such ani¬ 
mals ever did exist in this country, but the 
scientists had one animal picture that showed 
the dinosaurus as he existed when alive, an 
animal over 70 feet long, that would weigh 
as much as a dozen of our largest elephants, 
with a neck as long as 15 giraffes, and then 
they showed us bones of these animals that 
they dug out and put together, and the com¬ 
pleted mess of bones showed that the dino¬ 
saurus could eat out of a six-story window, 
and pa’s circus instinct told him that if he 
73 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

could find such an animal alive, and capture 
it for the show, our fortunes would be made. 

We stayed there all night, and pa asked 
questions about the probability of there being 
such animals alive at this day, and the scien¬ 
tists promptly told pa these animals only ex¬ 
isted ages and ages ago, when the country 
was covered with water and was a part of 
the ocean, and that the animals lived on the 
high places, but when the water receded, 
and the ocean became a desert, the dinos- 
aurus died of a broken heart, and all we 
had to show for it was these petrified bones. 

Pa ought to have believed the scientists, 
’cause they know all about their business, 
but after the scientists had gone to bed the 
cowboys began to string pa. They told him 
that about a hundred miles to the north, in 
74 



A Boy Dinosaurus Reached Out His Neck and Picked Up a Steer. 









PECK’S BAD BOY 

a valley in the mountains, the dinos- 
aurus still existed, alive, and that no man 
dare go there. One cowboy said he was 
herding a bunch of cattle in a valley up 
there once, and the bunch got into a drove of 
dinosauruses, and the first thing he knew a 
big dinosaurus reached out his neck and 
picked up a steer, raised it in the air about 
80 feet, as easy as a derrick would pick up 
a dog house, and the dinosaurus swallowed 
the steer whole, and the other dinosauruses 
each swallowed a steer. The cowboy said 
before he knew it his whole bunch of steers 
was swallowed whole, and they would have 
swallowed him and his horse if he hadn’t 
skinned out on a gallop. He said he could 
hear the dinosauruses for miles, making a 
noise like distant thunder, whether from 
76 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

eating the steers, giving them a pain, or 
whether bidding defiance to him and his 
horse, he never could make out, but he said 
nothing but money could ever induce him 
to go into that valley again. 

Pa asked the other cowboys if they had 
ever been to that dinosaurus valley, and they 
winked at each other and said they had 
heard of it, but there was not money enough 
to hire them to go there, ’cause they had 
heard that a man’s life was not safe a min¬ 
ute. Bill, who had told the story, was the 
only man who had ever been there, and the 
only man living that had seen a live di¬ 
nosaurus. 

Then we turned in, and pa never slept a 
wink all night, thinking of the rare animals, 
or insects, or reptiles, or whatever they are, 
77 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

that he expected to land for the show. He 
whispered to me in the night and said: 
“Hennery, I am on the trail of the dinos- 
aurus, and while I am not prepared to cap¬ 
ture one alive, at this time, I am going to 
that valley and see the animals alive, and 
make plans for their capture, and report to 
the management of the show. What do you 
think about it?” 

I told pa that I thought that cowboy, Bill, 
was the worst liar that we had ever run up 
against, and I knew by studying geography 
in school that the dinosaurus was extinct, and 
had been for thousands of years. Pa said: 
“So they say the buffalo is extinct, but you 
can find ’em, if you have got the money. 
Lots of thing are extinct, till some brave ex¬ 
plorer penetrates the fastnesses and finds 

78 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

them. The mastodon is extinct, according 
to the scientists, but they are alive in Alaska. 
The north pole is extinct, but some dub in 
a balloon will find it all right. I tell you, 
I am going to see a live dinosaurus, or bust. 
You hear me?” and pa heard them cooking 
breakfast, and we got up. 

Before noon pa had organized a pack 
train and hired three cowboys, and got some 
diagrams and pictures of dinosauruses from 
the scientists, and we started north on the 
biggest fool expedition that ever was, but pa 
was as earnest and excited as Peary plan¬ 
ning a north pole expedition, and as busy as 
a boy killing snakes. After the cowboys 
and the scientists had tried to get pa to make 
his will before he went, and got the ad¬ 
dresses where pa wanted our remains sent 
79 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


to in case of our being found dried up on 
the prairie, and our bones polished by 
wolves, we were on the move, and pa was so 
happy you would think he had already found 
a live dinosaurus, and had him in a cage. 

For four days we rode along up and down 
foothills, and divides, and small mountains, 
and all the time pa was telling the boys how, 
after we had located our dinosauruses, we 
would go back east and organize an expedi¬ 
tion with derricks and cages as big as a 
house, and come back and drive the animals 
in. And when we got them with the show 
people we would run trains hundreds of 
miles to see the rarest animals any show ever 
exhibited to a discriminating public, and we 
could charge five dollars for tickets, and 
people would mob each other to get up to 
80 . 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

the ticket wagon. Then the boys would 
wink at each other, and tap their foreheads 
with their fingers, and look at pa as though 
they expected he would break out violently 
insane any minute. 

Finally we got up on a high ridge, and a 
beautiful, fertile valley was unfolded to our 
view, and Bill, the cowboy who had had 
his herd of steers eaten by the dinosaurus, 
said that was the place, and he began to 
shiver like he had the ague. He said he 
wouldn’t go any farther without another 
hundred dollars, and pa asked the other cow¬ 
boys if they were afraid, too, and they said 
they were a little scared, but for another 
hundred dollars they would forget it, forget 
their families, and go down into the death 
valley. 


81 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


Pa paid them the money, and we went 
down into the valley, and rode along, ex¬ 
pecting to jump a flock of dinosauruses any 
minute, but the valley was as still as death, 
and pa said to Bill: “Why don’t you bring 
on your dinosauruses,” and Bill said he 
guessed by the time we got up to the far end 
of the valley we would see something that 
would make us stand without hitching. 

We went on towards where the valley 
came to a point where there seemed to be a 
hole in the side of the mountain, when all of 
a sudden four or five gun shots were heard, 
and four of our horses dropped dead in 
their tracks, and about a dozen men come 
out of the hole in the wall and told us to hold 
up our hands, and when we did so they took 
82 



We Were Captured by the Curry’s Gang. 
















> ■ 

PECK’S BAD BOY / 


our guns away and told us to come in out of 
the wet. v 

We went into a cave and found that we 
had been captured by Curry’s gang of train 
robbers, who made their headquarters in the 
hole in the wall. The leader searched pa 
and took all his money, and told us to make 
ourselves at home. Pa protested, and said 
he was an old showman who had come to 
the valley looking for the supposed-to-be-ex¬ 
tinct dinosaurus, to capture one for the 
show, and the leader of the gang said he was 
the only dinosaurus there was, but he hadn’t 
been captured. Then the leader slapped 
our cowboys on the shoulders and told them 
they had done a good job to bring into camp 
such a rich old codger as pa was, and then 
we found that the cowboys belonged to 

84 



WITH THE COWBOYS 

Curry’s gang, and had roped pa in in order 
to get a ransom. 

The leader asked pa about how much he 
thought his friends at the east could raise 
to get him out, and when pa found he was 
in the hands of bandits, and that the di- 
nosaurus mine was salted, and he had been 
made a fool of, he said to me: “Hennery, 
now, honest, between man and man, would¬ 
n’t this skin you?” 

I began to cry and said: “Pa, both of 
us are skun. How are we going to get out 
of this?” and pa said: “Watch me” 


85 


CHAPTER V. 


Pa and the Bad Boy Among the Train Rob¬ 
bers—Pa Tries to Persuade the Head 
Bandit to Become a Financier—The Ban¬ 
dit Prefers Train Robbery and Puts Up a 
Good Argument. 

I used to think I would like to be a train 
robber, and have a nice gang of boys to do 
my bidding. I have often pictured my gang 
putting a red light on the track and stop¬ 
ping a train laden with gold, holding a re¬ 
volver to the head of the engineer, and com¬ 
pelling him to go and dynamite the express 
car. Then we would fill our pockets and 
haversacks with rolls of bills that would 
choke a hippopotamus, and ride away to our 
86 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

shack in the mountains, divide up the swag, 
go on a trip to New York, bathe in cham¬ 
pagne, dress like millionaires, go to theaters 
morning, noon and night, eat lobster until 
our stomachs would form an anti-lobster 
union, and be so gay the people would think 
we were young Vandergoulds. Since pa 
and I were captured by the Hole-in-the-Wall 
gang I have found that all is not glorious 
in the train-robbing and capturing-for-ran- 
som business, and that robbers are never 
happy except when a robbery is safely over, 
and the gang gets good and drunk. 

The first day or two after pa and I and 
the traitorous cowboys were captured, we 
had a pretty nice time, eating canned stuff 
and elk meat, and pa was kept busy telling 
the gang of what had happened in the out- 

87 





Pa Told Them About the Wave of Reform. 












WITH THE COWBOYS 

side world for several months, as the gang 
did not read the daily papers. When they 
robbed a train they let the newsboy alone 
for fear he would get the drop on them. 

Pa told them about the wave of reform 
that was going over the country, and how 
the politicians were taking the railroads and 
monopolists by the neck, and shaking them 
like a terrier would shake a rat; how the in¬ 
surance companies that had been for years 
tying the policy holders hand and foot, and 
searching their pockets for illicit gains had 
been caught in the act, and how the presi¬ 
dents and directors were liable to have to 
serve time in the penitentiary. Pa told the 
Hole-in-the-Wall gang all the news until he 
got hoarse. 

“And how is my old friend Teddy, the 

89 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


rough rider?” asked one of the gang, who 
claimed he had gone up to San Juan hill with 
the president. 

“The president is in fine shape,” said pa, 
“and he is making friends every day, fight¬ 
ing the trusts, and trying to save the people 
from ruin.” 

“Gee, but what a train robber Teddy 
would have made, if he had turned his tal¬ 
ents in that direction, instead of wasting his 
strenuousness in politics,” said the leader of 
the gang. “I would give a thousand dollars 
to see him draw a bead on the engineer of 
a fast mail, and make him get down and do 
the dynamite act, and then load up the sad¬ 
dle bags and pull out for the Hole-in-the- 
Wall. That man has wasted his opportu¬ 
nities, and instead of being at the head of a 
90 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

gang of robbers, with all the world at his 
feet, ready to hold up their hands at the 
slightest hint, living a life of freedom in the 
mountains, there he is doing political stunts, 
and wearing boiled clothes, and eating with 
a fork.” And the bandit sighed for Teddy. 

“Well, he will make himself just as 
famous,” said pa, “if he succeeds in land¬ 
ing the holdup men of Wall street, and com¬ 
pelling them to disgorge their stealings. 
But say,” said pa, looking the leader of the 
bandit gang square in the eyes, “why don’t 
you give up this bad habit of robbing people 
with guns, and go back east and enter some 
respectable business and make your mark? 
You are a born financier, I can see by the 
way you divide up the increment when you 
rob a train. You would shine in the busi- 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


ne99 world. Come on, go back east with me, 
and I will use my influence to get you in 
among the men who own automobiles and 
yachts, and drive four-in-hands. What do 
you say?” 

“No, it is too late,” said the leader of the 
Hole-in-the-Wall gang of train robbers, 
with a sigh. “I should be out-classed if I 
went into Wall street now. I have got many 
of the elements in my make up of the suc¬ 
cessful financier, and the oil octopus, and if 
I had not become a train robber I might 
have been a successful insurance president, 
but I have always been handicapped* by a 
conscience. I could not rob widows and or¬ 
phans if I tried. It would give me a pain 
that medicine would not cure to know that 
women and children were crying for bread 
92 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

because I had robbed them and was living 
high on their money. If it wasn’t for my con¬ 
science I could take the presidency of a life 
insurance company, and rob right and left, 
equal to any of the crowned heads who are 
now in the business. But if I was driving in 
my automobile and should run over a poor 
woman who might be a policy holder, I 
could not act as would be expected of me, 
and look around disdainfully at her mangled 
body in the road, and sneer at her rapidly- 
cooling remains, and put on steam and skip 
out with my mask on. I would want to 
choke off the snorting, bad-smelling jugger¬ 
naut and get out and pick up the dear old 
soul and try to restore her to consciousness, 
which act would cause me to be boycotted 
93 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

by the automobile murderers’ union and I 
would be a marked man. 

“As president of a life insurance com¬ 
pany I could not vote myself a hundred and 
fifty thousand dollars a year salary, and take 
it from fatherless children and widows and 
retain my self respect. Out here in the 
mountains I can occasionally take my boys, 
when our funds get low, and ride away to 
a railroad, and hold up the choo-choo cars, 
and take toll, but not of the poor passengers. 
Who do we rob? Why the railroads are 
owned by Standard Oil, and if we take a 
few thousand dollars, all Mr. Rockefeller 
has to do is to raise the price of kerosene for 
a day or two and he comes out even. The 
express car stuff is all owned by Wall street, 
and when we take the contents of a safe, ten 
94 


\ 






the Engineer—“Charley, Turn Her Off and Stop Her. 














PECK’S BAD BOY 

thousand or twenty thousand dollars, the 
directors of the express company sell stock 
short in Wall street and make a million or 
so to cover the loss by the bandits of the 
far west, and pocket the balance. So you 
see we are doing them a favor to rob a train, 
and my conscience is clear. I am always 
sorry when an engineer or expressman is 
killed, and when such a thing occurs I find 
out the family and send money to take care 
of them, but of late years we never kill any¬ 
body, because the train hands don’t resist any 
more, for they do not care to die to save 
Wall street money. Now when I say to an 
engineer: ‘Charley, turn her off and stop 
here in the gulch and take a dynamite stick 
and go wake up the express fellow by blow¬ 
ing off the door of his car,’ the engineer 
96 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

wipes his hands on his overalls and says: 
‘All right, Bill, but don’t point that gun at 
my head, ’cause it makes me nervous.’ He 
blows up the express car as a matter of ac¬ 
commodation to me, and the expressman 
comes to the door, rubbing his sleepy eyes 
open and says: ‘It’s a wonder you wouldn’t 
let a man get a little rest That dinky little 
safe in the corner hasn’t got anything in it 
to speak of.’ And then we blow up the little 
safe first, and maybe find all we want, and 
we hurry up, so the boys can go on about 
their business as quietly as possible. It is all 
reduced to a system, now, like running a 
railroad or pipe lines, and I am contented 
with my lot, and there is no strain on my con¬ 
science, as there would be if I was robbing 
the poor instead of the rich. Of course, there 
97 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

are some things that I would like to have 
the government do, like building us a house 
and furnishing us steam heat, because these 
caves are cold and in time will make us 
rheumatic, but I can wait another year, when 
we shall send a delegate to congress from this 
district who will look out for our interests. 
The Mormons are represented in congress, 
and I don’t see why we shouldn’t be.” 

“Well, you have got gall, all right,” said 
pa to the bandit. “You mean to tell me you 
had rather pursue your course as a train 
robber, away out here in the mountains with 
no doctor within a hundred miles of you, 
and no way to spend your money after you 
get it, sleeping nights on the rocks and eat¬ 
ing canned stuff you pack in here after rob¬ 
bing a grocery, than to enter the realms of 
98 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

high finance and be respected by the people, 
and be one of the people, with no price on 
your head, one of the great body of eighty 
million men who rule a country that is the 
pride of the earth? You must be daffy,” said 
pa, just as disgusted as he could be. 

“Sure, Mike,” said the robber. “Every¬ 
body here respects me, and who respects the 
Wall street high finance and life insurance 
robber? Not even their valets. Me one of 
the people? Ye gods, but you watch these 
same people for a few years. You say they 
run the government! They and their gov¬ 
ernment are run by Wall street, which owns 
the United States senate, body and soul. The 
people are pawns on a chess board, moved 
by the players, and they only talk, while the 
Wall street owners act. Let me tell you a 
99 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

story. I once had a dog trained so that he 
would lay down and roll over for a cracker, 
and would hold a piece of meat on his nose 
until his mouth would water and his eyes 
sparkle, but he would wait for me to snap 
my fingers before he would toss the meat in 
the air with his nose and snatch it in his 
mouth, and swallow it whole for fear I 
would get it away from him. He would 
stand on his hind legs and speak and beg for 
a bone to be thrown to him so he could catch 
it. Do you know, the people of this country 
remind me of that dog. If they do not as¬ 
sert themselves and take monopoly, high fi¬ 
nance, insurance robbery, grafting and mil¬ 
lionaire and billionaire ownership of every¬ 
thing that pays by the throat and strangle 
them all, and do business themselves instead 


ioo 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

of having business done for them by the 
money power, they will never get noticed 
except when they do their tricks like my old 
dog. When the time comes that the people 
wear collars and are led by chains, and they 
have to stand on their hind legs and speak 
to their rich and arrogant masters for bones, 
and hold meat on their noses until Wall 
street snaps its fingers, you will want to come 
out here in the mountains and live the free 
life of a train robber with a conscience. 
What do you think about it, bub?” said the 
robber to me. 

“Well,” says I to him, “you talk like a 
socialist, or a Democrat, but you talk all 
right. If I am one of the people I will do 
as the rest do, but I’ll be darned if I will get 
down and roll over for anybody.” 


IOI 


CHAPTER VI. 

Pa Plays Surgeon and Earns the Good Will 
of the Bandits—They Give Him a Course 
Dinner—Speeches Follow the Banquet— 
Pa is Made Honorary Member of the 
Band—Pa and the Bad Boy Allowed to 
Go Free Without Ransom. 

We had the worst and the best two weeks 
of our lives while prisoners of the train rob¬ 
bers at the Hole-in-the-Wall, because we 
had plenty to eat, and good company, with 
hunting for game in the foothills by day, and 
cinch at night, but the sleeping on the rocks 
of the cave, with buffalo robes for beds, was 
the greatest of all. Pa got younger every 
day, but he yearned to be released and would 
look for hours down the dinasorus valley, 


102 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

hoping to see soldiers or circus men who 
might hear of our capture, charging down 
the opposite hills and up the valley to our 
rescue, but nobody ever came, and pa felt 
like Robinson Crusoe on the island. 

Some times for a couple of days the rob¬ 
bers would go away to rob a train or a stage 
coach, and leave us with a few guards, who 
acted as though they wanted us to try to es¬ 
cape, so they could shoot us in the back, 
but we stayed, and fried bacon and elk meat 
and sighed for rescue. 

One day the robbers came back from a 
raid with piles of greenbacks as big as a bale 
of hay, and it was evident they had robbed 
a train and been resisted, because one man 
had a bullet in his thigh, and pa had to use 
his knowledge of surgery to dig out the shot, 
103 



One Day the Robbers Came Back from a Raid with Piles of Greenbacks. 













WITH THE COWBOYS 

and he made a big bluff at being a surgeon, 
and succeeded in getting the balls out and 
healing up the sores, so the bandits thought 
pa was great. When he insisted that the 
leader let him know how much it would be 
to ransom us, so we could send to the cir¬ 
cus for money, the leader told pa he had 
been such a decent prisoner, and had been 
such good company, and had been such a 
help in digging the bullets out of the 
wounded, that the gang was going to let us 
go free, without taking a cent from us, but 
was going to consider us honorary members 
of the gang and divide the money they had 
secured in the last hold-up with us. 

Pa said he wanted his liberty, thanked 
the leader for his kind words, but he said 
there was a strong feeling in the east against 

105 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

truly good people like himself taking tainted 
money, and while he would not want to make 
a comparison between the methods men 
adopt to secure tainted money, in business or 
highway robbery, he hoped the gang to 
which he had been elected an honorary mem¬ 
ber would not insist on his carrying away any 
of the tainted money. 

“You are all right in theory, old man,” 
said the leader of the gang, “but this money 
which might have been tainted when it was 
chipped by express from Wall street to the 
far west, has been purified by passing 
through our hands, where it has been car¬ 
ried over mountain ranges on pack horses, 
in blizzards, till every tainted germ has been 
blown away. Now, we propose to give you 
a banquet to-morrow night, at which we shall 
106 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

all make speeches, and then you will be pro¬ 
vided with horses, supplies and money, and 
guided away from here blindfolded, and 
within 48 hours you will be free as the birds, 
and all we ask is that you will never give 
us and our hiding place away to Billy Pink¬ 
erton. Is it a go?” 

Pa said it was a go all right except taking 
the tainted money, but he would think it 
over, and dream over it, and maybe take his 
share of the swag, but he wanted to be al¬ 
lowed to return it if, after calling a meeting 
of his board of directors, they should refuse 
to receive the tainted money. Pa added that 
the board of directors of a circus might not 
be as particular as a church or college, and 
he thought he could assure the gang that the 
money would not come back to bother them. 

107 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

The leader of the gang said that would be 
all right, and for pa and I and the boys to 
begin to pack up and get ready to return to 
civilization and all its wickedness. We 
worked all day and played cinch for hun¬ 
dred dollar bills all the evening, and the 
next day arranged for the banquet 
When night came, and the pine knots were 
lit in the cave, about 15 bandits and pa and 
I sat down to a course banquet on the floor 
of the cave, and ate and drank for an hour. 
We had few dishes, except tin cups and tin 
plates, but it was a banquet all right. The 
first course was soup, served in cans, each 
man having a can of soup with a hole in the 
top, made by driving a nail through the tin, 
and we sucked the soup through the hole. 
The next course was fish, each man having a 
108 



Drank to the Health of Their Distinguished Guest, 












WITH THE COWBOYS 

can of sardines, and we ate them with hard 
tack. Then we had a game course, consist¬ 
ing of fried elk, and then a salad of canned 
baked beans, and coffee with condensed milk, 
and a spoonful or two of condensed milk for 
ice cream. When the banquet was over the 
leader of the bandits rapped on the stone 
floor of the cave with the butt of his revolver 
for attention, and taking a canteen of whisky 
for a loving cup, he drank to the health of 
their distinguished guest, and passed it 
around, so all might drink, and then he spoke 
as follows: 

“Fellow Highway Robbers: We have with 
us to-night one who comes from the outside 
world, with all its wickedness, this old man, 
simple as a child, and yet foxy as the world 
goes, this easy mark who is told that the di- 
109 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


nasorus still exists, and believes it, and comes 
to this valley to find it. If some one told him 
that Adam and Eve were still alive, and run¬ 
ning a stock ranch up in the Big Horn basin, 
he would believe it, and if it came to him 
as a secret that Solomon in all his glory was 
placer mining in a distant valley over the 
mountains, he would rush off to engage Solo¬ 
mon to drive a chariot next year in his show. 
Such an ability to absorb things that are not 
so, in a world where all men are suspicious 
of each other, should be encouraged. This 
old man comes to our quiet valley, where all 
is peace, and where we are honest, fresh from 
the wicked world, where grafting is a science 
respected by many, and where the bank rob¬ 
ber who gets above a million is seldom con¬ 
victed and always respected, while we, who 


II? 


Dad among thg cowboys. 


















s. 



WITH THE COWBOYS 

only occasionally meet a train with a red 
light and pass the plate, and take up a slight 
collection, are looked upon as men who 
would commit a crime. Why, gentlemen, 
our profession is more respectable than that 
of the man who is appointed administrator 
of the estate of his dead friend, and who 
blows in the money and lets the widow and 
orphan go to the poorhouse, or the officer of 
a savings bank who borrows the money of the 
poor and when they hear that he is flying 
high demand their money, and he closes the 
bank, and eventually pays seven cents on the 
dollar, and is looked upon as a great finan¬ 
cier. It has been a pleasure to us to have this 
kindly old man visit us, and by his example 
of the Golden Rule, to do to others as you 
would be done by, make us contented with 
113 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


our lot. We are not the kind of business 
men who try to ruin the business of com¬ 
petitors by poisoning their wells, or freezing 
them out of business. If any other train rob¬ 
bers want to do business in our territory, 
they have the same rights that we have, and 
the world is big enough for all to ply their 
trade. Now I am going to call upon our 
friend, Buckskin Bill, my associate in crime, 
who was wounded by a misdirected load of 
buckshot in our latest raid, which buckshot 
were so ably removed from his person by our 
distinguished friend who is so soon to leave 
us,” and the leader again passed the loving 
cup and gave way to Buckskin Bill, who 
said: 

“Pals—I do not know if you have ever 
suspected that before I joined this bunch I 
114 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

was steeped in crime, but I must confess to 
you that I was a Chicago alderman for one 
term, during the passage of the gas fran¬ 
chise and the traction deal, but I trust I have 
reformed, because I have led a different life 
all these years. I like this free life of the 
mountains, where what you get in a hold-up 
is yours, and you do not have to divide with 
politicians, and if you refuse to divide they 
squeal on you, and you see the guide board 
pointing to Joliet. I would not go back to 
the wicked life of an alderman, to make a 
dishonest living by holding up bills until the 
agent came around and gave me an envelope, 
but I do want to hear from my old pals in 
the common council, and I would ask our 
corpulent friend, who so ably picked the 
buckshot out of my remains, when he passes 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

through Chicago to go to the council chamber 
and give my benediction to my colleagues, 
and ask them to repent before it is too late, 
and come west and go into legitimate rob¬ 
bery, far away from the sleuths who are con¬ 
stantly on their trails. While the lamp con¬ 
tinues to burn the vilest alderman may buy 
a ticket to the free and healthy west, and we 
will give him a welcome. Old man, shake,” 
and Buckskin Bill shook pa’s hand and sat 
down on his knees, because his wounds were 
not he'aled. 

The leader of the gang then called upon 
pa for a few remarks, and pa said: “Gen¬ 
tlemen, you have done me great honor to 
make me an honorary member of your organ¬ 
ization, and I shall go away from here with 
a feeling that you are the highest type of 
116 




Guided Us In the Dark Through the Valley. 












PECK’S BAD BOY 

robbers, men that it is a pleasure to know, 
and that you are not to be mentioned in the 
same category of the wicked men who rob the 
poor right and left, in what we consider civ¬ 
ilization in the east. You only take toll from 
the great corporations who have plenty, and 
your robberies do not bring sorrow and sad¬ 
ness to the poor and hungry. No matter 
what inducements may be held out to me in 
the future, to join the life insurance robbers, 
the political robbers, the great corporations 
that wring the last dollar from their victims, 
I shall always remember, in declining such 
overtures, that I am an honorary member of 
this organization of honest, straightforward, 
conscientious hold-up men, who would rob 
only the rich and divide with the poor, and 
I hope some day, if our country goes to the 
118 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

dogs, so a respectable man cannot hold of¬ 
fice, or do business on the square, to come 
back here and become one of you in fact, and 
work the game to the limit. If you find you 
cannot make it pay out here, come east and 
I will give you the three-card monte and the 
shell game concession with our show next 
summer, where you can make a good living 
out of the jays that patronize us, and always 
have a little money left when we get through 
with them, which it is a shame for them to 
be allowed to carry home after the evening 
performance. I thank you, gentlemen.” 

Then the loving cup was passed, we sad¬ 
dled our horses and the robbers guided us in 
the dark through the valley, and out towards 
the railroad, pa’s saddlebags filled with the 
tainted money. At daylight the next morn- 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ing, when the guides left us, pa took a big 
roll of bills out of his saddlebags and opened 
it and, by gosh, if it wasn’t a lot of old con¬ 
federate money that wasn’t worth a cent. Pa 
used some words that made me sick, and then 
I cried. So did pa. 


120 


CHAPTER VII. 


Pa and the Bad Boy Stop Off at a Lively 
Western Town—Pa Buys Mining Stock 
and Takes Part in a Rabbit Drive. 

Well, we are on the way back home, after 
having engaged Indians, cowboys, rough 
riders and highway robbers to join our show 
for next season. Pa felt real young and kit- 
teny when we came to the railroad, after 
leaving our robber friends at the Hole-in-the- 
Wall, far into the mountain country. We 
came to a lively town on the railroad, where 
every other house is a gambling house, and 
every other one a plain saloon, and there was 
great excitement in the town over our arrival, 
’cause there don’t very many rich and pros¬ 
perous people stop there. 


121 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


Pa had looked over the money the robbers 
had given him, to throw it away, because it 
was old-fashioned confederate money, when 
he found that there was only one bundle of 
confederate money, and the rest was all good 
greenbacks, the bundle of confederate money 
probably having been shipped west to some 
museum, and the robbers having got hold of 
it in the dark, brought it along. Pa burned 
up the bad money at the hotel, and then he 
got stuck on the town, and said he would stay 
there a few days and rest up, and incidentally 
break a few faro banks, by a system, the way 
the smart alecks break the bank at Monte 
Carlo. 

I teased pa to take the first train for home, 
so we could join the circus before it closed 
the season, and he could report to the man- 


122 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

agers the result of his business trip to the 
west, but pa said he had heard of a man who 
had a herd of buffalo on a ranch not far from 
that town, and before he returned to the show 
he was going to buy a herd of buffalo for the 
cowboys and Indians to chase around the 
wild west show. 

I couldn’t do anything with pa, so we 
stayed at that town until pa got good and 
ready to go home. He bucked the faro bank 
some, but the gamblers soon found he had so 
much money that he could break any bank, 
so they closed up their lay-outs and began to 
sell pa mining stock in mines which were 
fabulously rich if they only had money to 
develop them. They salted some mines near 
town for pa to examine, and when he found 
that they contained gold enough in every 
123 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

shovelful of dirt to make a man crazy, he 
bought a whole lot of stock, and then the 
gamblers entertained pa for all that was out. 

They got up dances and fandangos, and 
pa was it, sure, and I was proud of him, 
cause he did not lose his head. He just 
acted dignified, and they thought they were 
entertaining a distinguished man. Every¬ 
thing would have gone all right, and we 
would have got out with honor, if it hadn’t 
been for the annual rabbit drive that came 
off while we were there. Part of the coun¬ 
try is irrigated, and good crops are grown, 
but the jackrabbits are so numerous that they 
come in off the plains adjoining the green 
spots, at night, and eat everything in sight, 
so once a year the people get up a rabbit 
drive and go out in the night by the hundred, 
124 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

on horseback, and surround the country for 
ten miles or so, and at daylight ride along 
towards a corral, where thousands of rabbits 
are driven in and slaughtered with clubs. 
The men ride close together, with dogs, and 
no guilty rabbit can escape. 

Pa thought it would be a picnic, and so 
we went along, but pa wishes that he had let 
well enough alone and kept out of the rabbit 
game. Those natives are full of fun, and on 
these rabbit drives they always pick out some 
man to have fun with, and they picked out 
pa as the victim. We rode along for a 
couple of hours, flushing rabbits by the 
dozen, and they would run along ahead of 
us, and multiply, so that when the corral was 
in sight ahead the prairie was alive with long 
eared animals, so the earth seemed to be mov- 
125 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ing, and it almost made a man dizzy to look 
at them. 

The hundreds of men on horseback had 
come in close together from all sides, and 
when we were within half a mile of the cor¬ 
ral the crowd stopped at a signal, and the 
leader told pa that now was the time to make 
a cavalry charge on the rabbits, and he asked 
pa if he was afraid and wanted to go back, 
and pa said he had been a soldier and 
charged the enemy; had been a politician 
and had fought in hot campaigns; had 
hunted tigers and lions in the jungle, and 
rode barebacked in the circus, and gone into 
lions’ dens, and been married, and he guessed 
he was not going to show the white feather 
chasing jackrabbits. They could sound the 
bugle charge as soon as they got ready, and 
126 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

they would find him in the game till the cur¬ 
tain was rung down. 

That was what they wanted pa to say, so, 
as pa’s horse was tired, they suggested that 
he get on to a fresh horse, and pa said all 
right, they couldn’t get a horse too fresh for 
him, and he got on to a spunky pony, and I 
noticed that there was no bit in the pony’s 
mouth, but only a rope around the pony’s 
nose, and I was afraid something would hap¬ 
pen to pa. I told him he and I better dis¬ 
mount, and climb a mesquite tree and watch 
the fun from a safe place. 

Pa said: “Not on your life; your pa is 
going right amongst the big game, and is 
going to make those rabbits think the day of 
judgment has arrived. Give me a club.” 

The leader handed pa an ax handle, and 
127 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

when we looked ahead towards the corral 
where the rabbits had been driven, it seemed 
as though there were a million of them, and 
they were jumping over each other so it 
looked as though there was a snow bank of 
rabbits four feet thick. When pa said he 
was ready a fellow sounded a bugle, and pa’s 
pony started off on the jump for the corral, 
and all the other horses started, and every¬ 
body yelled, but they held back their horses 
so pa could have the whole field to himself. 

Gee, but I was sorry for pa. His horse 
rushed right into the corral amongst the rab¬ 
bits, and when it got right where the rabbits 
were the thickest, the darn horse began to 
buck, and tossed pa in the air just as though 
he had been thrown up in a blanket, and he 
came down on a soft bed of struggling and 
128 





The Pony Tossed Pa in the Air. 







PECK'S BAD BOY 

scared rabbits, and the other horsemen 
stopped at the edge of the corral and watched 
pa, and I got off my horse and climbed up 
on a post of the corral and tried to pick out 
pa. Then all the hundred or more dogs were 
let loose in amongst pa and the rabbits, and 
it was a sight worth going miles to see if it 
had been somebody else than pa that was 
holding the center of the stage, and all the 
crowd laughing at pa, and yelling to him to 
stand his ground. 

Well, pa swung his ax handle and killed 
an occasional rabbit, but there were thou¬ 
sands all around, and pa seemed to be wad¬ 
ing up to his middle in rabbits, and they 
would jump all over him, and bunt him with 
their heads, and scratch him with their toe¬ 
nails, and the dogs would grab rabbits and 
130 

































Pa Swung His Ax Handle. 













PECK'S BAD BOY 


shake them, and pa would fall down and rab¬ 
bits would run over him till you couldn’t see 
pa at all. Then he would raise up again 
and maul the animals with his club, and his 
clothes were so covered with rabbit hair that 
he looked like a big rabbit himself. He lost 
his hat and looked as though he was getting 
exhausted, and then he stopped and spit on 
his hands and yelled to the rest of the men, 
who had dismounted and were lined up at 
the edge of the corral, and said: “You con¬ 
demned loafers, why don’t you come in here 
and help us dogs kill off these vermin, cause 
I don’t want to have all the fun. Come on 
in, the water is fine,” and pa laughed as 
though he was in swimming and wanted the 
rest of the gang to come in. 

The crowd thought they had given the dis- 
132 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

tinguished stranger his inning, and so they 
all rushed in with clubs and began to kill 
rabbits and drive them away from pa. In an 
hour or so the most of them were killed, and 
pa was so tired he went and sat down on the 
ground to rest, and I got down off my perch 
and went to pa and asked him what he 
thought of this latest experience, and I be¬ 
gan to pick rabbit hairs off pa’s clothes. 

‘Til tell you what it is, Hennery,” said 
pa, as he breathed hard, as though he had 
been running a foot race, “this rabbit drive 
reminds me of the way the rich corporations 
look upon the poor people, just as we look 
upon the jackrabbits. We pity a single jack- 
rabbit, and he runs when he sees us, and 
seems to say: ‘Please, mister, let me alone, 
and let me nibble around and eat the stuff 


133 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

you do not want, and we drive them into a 
bunch, the way the rich and mean iron- 
handed trusts drive the people, and then we 
turn in and club them with the ax handle of 
graft and greed, and we keep our power 
over them, if enough are killed off so we are 
in the majority, but the jackrabbits that es¬ 
cape the drive keep on breeding, like the 
poor people that the trusts try to exterminate. 
Some day the jackrabbit and the poor people 
will get nerve enough to fight back, and then 
the jackrabbit and the poor people will out¬ 
number the men who fight them and kill 
them, and they will turn on the cowboys with 
the clubs, and the trusts with the big head, 
and drive those who now pursue them into 
corrals on the prairies and into penitentiaries 
134 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

in the states, and those who are pig-headed 
and cruel will get theirs, see?” 

I told pa I thought I could see, though 
there were rabbit hairs in my eyes, and then 
I got pa to get up and mount his horse, and 
we rode back to town with the gang, while 
the 5,000 rabbit carcasses were hauled to 
town in wagons and loaded on the cars. 

“Where do you send those jackrabbits?” 
asked pa of the leader of the slayers, as he 
watched them loading the rabbits. 

“To the Chicago packing houses,” said the 
man. “They make the finest canned chicken 
you ever et.” 

“The devil, you say,” said pa. “Then we 
have been working all day to make packing 
houses rich. Wouldn’t that skin you?” 

Then we went to the hotel and I put court- 
135 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

plaster on pa where the rabbits had scratched 
the skin off, and pa arranged to go out next 
day to the ranch where the herd of buffaloes 
live, to look for bigger game for the show, 
though he would like to have a rabbit drive 
in the circus ring next year if he could train 
the rabbits. 


136 


CHAPTER VIII. 

Pa and the Bad Boy Visit a Buffalo Ranch— 
Pa Pays for the Privilege of Killing a 
Buffalo, but Doesn’t Accomplish His Pur¬ 
pose—He Hires a Herd for the Show 
Next Year. 

This is the last week pa and I will be in 
the far west looking for freaks for the wild 
west department of our show for next year. 
Next week, if pa lives, we shall be back 
under the tent, to see the show close up the 
season, and shake hands all around with our 
old friends, the freaks, the performers, the 
managers and all of ’em. 

It will be a glad day for us, for we have 
had an awful time out west. If pa would 
137 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

only take advice, and travel like a plain, or¬ 
dinary citizen, who is willing to learn things, 
it would be different, but he wants to show 
people that he knows it all, and he wants to 
pose as the one to give information, and so 
when he is taught anything new it jars him. 
Any man with horse sense would know that 
it takes years to learn how to rope steers, and 
keep from being tipped off the horse, and 
run over by a procession of cows, but be¬ 
cause pa had lassoed hitching posts in his 
youth, with a clothes line, with a slip noose 
in it, he posed among cowboys as being an 
expert roper, and where did he land? In 
the cactus. 

He was just meat for the natives to have 
fun with, and he has sure been hashed up on 
this trip. But the worst of all was this trip 

138 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

to the buffalo ranch, to secure buffaloes for 
the show, and if I was in pa’s place I would 
go into retirement, and never look a man in 
the face. Pa’s idea was that these buffaloes 
on the ranch were just as wild as they used to 
be when they run at large on the plains. 
When we got to the ranch at evening, pa put 
in the whole time until it was time to go to 
bed telling the ranchman and his hired man 
what great things he had done killing wild 
animals, and what dangerous places he had 
been in, and what bold things he had done. 

He said, while the object of his visit to 
the ranch was to buy a herd of buffaloes for 
the show, the thing he wanted to do, above 
all, was to kill a buffalo bull in single-handed 
combat, and have the head and horns to 
ornament his den, and the hide for a lap robe, 
139 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

but the ranchmen would be welcome to the 
meat. He asked the man who owned the 
ranch if he might have the privilege, by pay¬ 
ing for it, of killing a buffalo. 

The ranchman said he would arrange it 
all right in the morning, and pa and T went 
to bed. After pa got to snoring, and killing 
buffaloes in his sleep, Fcould hear the ranch¬ 
man and his helpers planning pa’s humilia¬ 
tion, and when I tried to tell pa in the morn¬ 
ing that the crowd were stringing him he 
got mad at me and asked me to mind my own 
business, and that is something I never could 
do to save my life. 

Well, about daylight we were all out on 
the veranda, and they gave pa instructions 
about what he was to do. The ranchman 
said it was against the state laws to kill buf- 
140 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

falo, except in self-defense, so pa would have 
to get in a blind, like the German emperor, 
and have the game driven to him. They 
gave pa two big revolvers, loaded with blank 
cartridges, I know, because I heard them 
whisper about it the night before, and they 
gave him a peck measure of salt and told him 
to sneak up to a little shed out in a field and 
conceal himself until the game came along, 
and then open fire, and when his buffalo fell, 
mortally wounded, to go out and skin it. 

Pa asked what the salt was for, and they 
told him it was to salt the hide. Say, I knew 
that the place they sent pa to wait for buffalo 
was where they salted the animals once a 
week, and started to tell pa, but the rancher 
called me off and told me I could go with the 
men and help drive the game to destruction. 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

We waited until the ranchman had gone 
out with pa and got him nicely concealed, the 
way they conceal Emperor William when he 
slaughters stags, and pa looked as brave as 
any emperor as he got his two big revolvers 
ready for an emergency. The ranchman told 
pa that he had twelve shots in the revolvers, 
and he better begin firing when the big bull 
came over the ridge, on the trail, at the head 
of the herd, and as the animal advanced, as 
he no doubt would, to keep firing until the 
whole 12 shots were fired, and then if the ani¬ 
mal was not killed, to use his own judgment 
as to what to do, whether to run for the 
house, or lay down and pretend to be dead. 

Pa said he expected to kill the animal be¬ 
fore three shots had been fired, but if the 
worst came he could, run some, but the ranch- 
142 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

man said if he should run that the whole 
herd would be apt to stampede on him and 
run him down, and he thought pa better lay 
down and let them go by. 

Gee, but I pitied pa when we got out on 
the prairie and found the herd. They were 
as tame as Jersey cows, and the old bull, the 
fiercest of the lot, with a head as big as a 
barrel, came up to the ranchman and wanted 
to be scratched, like a big dog, and the calves 
and cows came up and licked our hands. It 
was hard work to drive them towards pa’s 
blind, ’cause they wanted to be petted, but 
the ranchman said as soon as we could get 
the bull up to the top of the ridge, so the old 
man would open fire on him, they would 
hurry right along to pa’s blind, ’cause they 
M3 












WITH THE COWBOYS 

always came to be salted at the signal of a 
revolver shot. 

So we pushed them along up towards the 
ridge, out of sight of pa, by punching them, 
and slapping them on the hams, and finally 
the head of the old bull appeared above the 
ridge on the regular cattle trail, and not more 
than ten rods from where pa was concealed. 
Then we heard a shot and we knew pa was 
alive to his danger. 

“There she blows,” said the ranchman, and 
then there was another shot, and by that time 
the whole herd of about 20 was on the ridge, 
and the shots came thick, and the herd started 
on a trot for the shed where pa was, to get 
their salt. When we had counted 12 shots 
and knew pa’s guns were empty we showed 
up on the ridge, and watched pa. 


*43 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

He started to run, with the peck measure 
of salt, but fell down and spilled the salt on 
the grass, and before he could get up the bull 
was so near that he dassent run, so he laid 
down and played dead, and the buffaloes sur¬ 
rounded him and licked up the salt, and paid 
no more attention to him than they would 
to a log until they had licked up all the salt. 
Then the bull began to lick pa’s hands and 
face, and pa yelled for help, but we got be¬ 
hind the ridge and went around towards the 
ranch, the ranchman telling us that the ani¬ 
mals were perfectly harmless and that as 
soon as they had licked pa’s face a little 
they would go off to a water hole to drink, 
and then go out and graze. 

We left pa yelling for help, and I guess 
he was praying some, ’cause once he got on 
146 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

his knees, but a couple of pet buffalo calves, 
that one of the rancher’s boys drives to a 
cart, went up to pa and began to lick his 
bald head, and chew his hair. 

Well, we got around to the ranch house, 
where we could see the herd, and see pa 
trying to push the calves away from being 
so familiar, and then the herd all left pa 
and went back over the ridge, and pa was 
alone with his empty revolvers and the peck 
measure. Pa seemed to be stunned at first, 
and then we all started out to rescue him, 
and he saw us coming, and he came to meet 
us. 

Pa was a sight. His hair was all mussed 
up, and his face was red and sore from con¬ 
tact with the rough buffaloes’ tongues, and 
the salt on their tongues made it smart, and 
147 




The Buffaloes Licked Pa’s Bald Head—Pa Began to Pray. 
























WITH THE COWBOYS 

his coat sleeves and trousers legs had been 
chewed off by the buffaloes, and he looked 
as though he had been through a corn 
shredder, and yet he was still brave and 
noble, and as we got near to him he said: 

“Got any trailing dogs?” 

“What you want trailing dogs for?” 
asked the ranchman. “What you want is a 
bath. Have any luck this morning buffalo- 
ing?” 

“Well I guess yes,” said pa, as he 
dropped the peck measure, and got out a 
revolver and asked for more cartridges. 
“I put twelve bullets into that bull’s carcass 
when he was charging on me, and how he 
carried them away is more than I know. 
Get me some dogs and a Winchester rifle 
and I will follow him till he drops in his 
149 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

tracks. That bull is my meat, you hear 
me?” and pa bent over and looked at his 
chewed clothes. 

“You don’t mean to tell me the bull 
charged on you and didn’t kill you?” said 
the ranchman, winking at the hired man. 
“How did you keep from being gored?” 

“Well it takes a pretty smart animal to 
get the best of me,” said pa, looking wise. 
“You see, when the bull came over the hill 
I gave him a couple of shots, one in the eye 
and another in the chest, but he came on, 
with his other eye flashing fire, and the hair 
on his head and on his hump sticking up like 
a porcupine, and the whole herd followed, 
bellowing and fairly shaking the earth, but 
I kept my nerve. I shot the bull full of 
lead, and he tottered along towards me, 

150 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

bound to have revenge, but just as he was 
going to gore me with his wicked horns I 
caught hold of the long hair on his head 
and yelled “Get out of here, condemn you,” 
and I looked him in the one eye, like this,” 
and pa certainly did look fierce, “and he 
threw up his head, with me hanging to his 
hair, and when I came down I kicked him 
in the ribs and he gave a grunt and a mourn¬ 
ful bellow, as though he was all in, and was 
afraid of me, and went off over the hill, 
followed by the herd, scared to death at a 
man that was not afraid to stand his ground 
against the fiercest animal that ever trod the 
ground. Now, come on and help me find 
the carcass.” Pa looked as though he meant 
it. 

“Well, you are a wonder,” said the ranch- 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

man, looking at pa in admiration. “I have 
seen men before that could lie some, but 
you have got Annanias beaten a block. Now 
we will go to the house and settle this thing, 
and I will send my trusty henchmen out 
henching after your bull.” 

Then we went to the house and got 
dinner, and the men drove up the buffalo 
into the barnyard and fed them hay, and we 
went out and played with the buffaloes, and 
pa found his bull hadn’t a scratch on him, 
and that he would lean up against pa and 
rub against him just like he was a fencepost. 

The ranchman told pa they had been 
stringing him, and that the animals were so 
tame you could feed them out of your hand, 
and that he had been shooting blank car¬ 
tridges, and the only thing he regretted was 
K2 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

that pa would lie so before strangers. Then 
pa bought the herd for the show, and next 
year pa will show audiences how he can 
tame the wildest of the animal kingdom, so 
they will eat out of his hand. 


153 


CHAPTER IX 


The Bad Boy and His Pa Return to the Cir¬ 
cus to Find They Have Been Quite For¬ 
gotten—The Fat Lady and the Bearded 
Woman Give Pa the Cold Shoulder—Pa 
Finally Makes Himself Recognized and 
Attends the Last Performance of the Sea¬ 
son. 

We arrived from the far west and struck 
the show at Indianapolis, where it was play¬ 
ing its last date of the season, before going 
to winter quarters. It was a sad home com¬ 
ing, ’cause the animals and the performers 
had forgotten us, and we had to be in¬ 
troduced to everybody. 

We arrived about noon and while I stayed 
down town to get a shine, pa took a street 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

car and went right up to the lot, and the 
crowd was around the ticket wagon getting 
ready to go in. Pa went up to the ticket 
taker at the entrance and said, “hello, Bill,” 
and was going to push right in, when Bill 
said that was no good, and there couldn’t 
any old geezer play the “hello Bill” busi¬ 
ness on him. 

A couple of bouncers took pa by the el¬ 
bows and fired him out, and the crowd 
laughed at pa, and told him to go and buy 
a ticket like a man, and pa told the bouncers 
he would discharge them on the spot. Pa 
went to the manager’s tent and complained 
that he had been fired out, and the manager 
said that was perfectly proper, unless he had 
a ticket, and he told pa to get out. Pa told 
them who he was, but they wouldn’t believe 
155 



\ 


A 




A Couple of Bouncers Took Pa by the Elbows and Fired Him Ouf 






WITH THE COWBOYS 

him. You see pa’s face was all red and sore 
where the buffaloes had licked him, and the 
buffaloes had licked all the hair dye out of 
his hair and whiskers, and they were as white 
as the driven snow. Pa looked 20 years 
older than when he went west. While they 
were arguing about pa and examining him 
to see if he had smallpox, I came up and pa 
saw me and he said, “Hennery, ain’t I your 
pa?” and I said “you can search me, that’s 
what they always said,” and then I identified 
pa, and they all shook hands with him, and 
he reported about the trip to the west, 
and what talent he had engaged for the 
wild west department for next year. Then 
we all went into the tent. I guess every¬ 
body was mad and excited, ’cause the show 
was going to close, and the salaries stop, as 
157 


PECK'S BAD BOY 

some of the performers were crying, and 
everybody was packed up, and all were pay¬ 
ing borrowed money. 

Pa went up to the freak’s platform and 
tapping the fat lady on the shoulder he said, 
“Hello, you seem to be taking on flesh, now 
that the show is going to close, and you 
ought to haye got that flesh on earlier in the 
season.” 

I shall never forget the scene. The fat 
lady did not recognize pa, but thought he 
was just an ordinary old Hoosier trying to 
take liberties with her, and she kicked pa’s 
feet out from under him, and pulled him 
down across her lap and with her big fat 
hand she gave him a few spanks that made 
pa see stars, and then cuffed pa’s ears, and 
let him up. He went over to the bearded 
158 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

woman for sympathy, asked her how she had 
got along without him so long, and she got 
mad too and swatted pa with her fist, and 
yelled for help. The giant came and was 
going to break pa in two, and pa asked the 
giant what it was to him, and he said the 
bearded woman was his wife, and that they 
were married the week before at Toledo. 
The giant lifted pa one with his hind foot, 
and pa got down off the platform, and he 
told them that was their last season with the 
show, when they had no respect for the gen¬ 
eral manager. 

Then they all found out who pa was, and 
apologized and tried to square themselves, 
but pa was hot enough to boil over, and we 
went off to see the animals. 

Say, there wasn’t a single animal that 
159 





WITH THE COWBOYS 

would have pa around. The zebras kicked 
at pa, the lions roared and sassed him, the 
hyenas snarled and howled, the wolves 
looked ugly, and the tigers acted as though 
they wanted to get him in the cage and tear 
out his tenderloin; the elephants wanted to 
catch pa and walk on his frame. The only 
friends pa seemed to have was the sacred 
bull and cow, who let him come near them, 
and when they began to lick pa’s hand he 
remembered his experience with the buf¬ 
faloes, and he drew away to the monkey 
cages. The ourang outang seemed to look 
on pa as an equal, and the monkeys treated 
me like a long lost brother. 

It was the saddest home coming I ever 
participated in, and when the performance 
began pa and I went and sat on the lowest 
161 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

seat near the ring, and the performers guyed 
pa for a Hoosier, and the lemonade butchers 
tried to sell pa lemonade and peanuts, which 
was the last hair, until a fakir tried to get 
pa to bet on a shell game, and that was the 
limit. 

Pa got up with a heavy heart, and started 
to go into the dressing room, and was ar¬ 
rested by one of the detectives, and put out 
under the canvas, and we went down town 
almost heartbroken. I told pa to go to a 
barber shop and have his hair and whiskers 
colored black again, and put on his old 
checkered vest, and big plug hat, and two- 
pound watch chain, and they would all know 
him. So pa had his hair and whiskers 
colored natural, and dressed up in the old 
way, and at evening we went back and stood 
162 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

around the tent, and everybody took off their 
hats to him, and when we went into the show 
at night everybody was polite, the freaks 
wanted pa to sit on the platform with them, 
and the animals came off their perch, and 
treated pa like they used to, and he was him¬ 
self again. 

He went around the big tent and watched 
the last performance of the season, and 
complimented the performers, went into the 
dressing room and jollied the members of 
the staff, and when the performance was 
over, and the audience had gone, all the 
managers and everybody connected with the 
show gathered in the ring to bid each other 
good bye, and make presents to each other. 
Everybody made speeches congratulating the 
management and all who had helped to 

163 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

make the show a success, and they all joined 
hands around the ring and sang “Auld 
Lang Sine,” the animals in the next tent join¬ 
ing in the chorus. 

The lights were lowered, and the canvas- 
men took down the tents and loaded them 
on the cars for home. We went down to 
the hotel and the managers listened to the 
reading of a statement from the treasurer 
showing how much money we had made, pa 
drew his share of the profits, and we took a 
train for home. 

At breakfast the next morning in the din¬ 
ing car, going into Chicago, pa said to me, 
“Hennery, we have had the most exciting five 
months of my life. The circus business is 
just like any other business. If you make 
good and we are ahead of the game, it is re- 
164 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

spectable, but if you run behind and have 
to deal with the sheriff, you are suspected 
of being crooked. Make the people laugh 
and forget their troubles, and you are a 
benefactor, but if your show is so bad that 
it makes them kick and find fault, and wish 
they had stayed at home, you might as 
well put crape on the grand entrance, and 
go out of the business. The animals in a 
show are just like the people we meet in 
society. If you put on a good front, and act 
as though you were the whole thing, they 
respect you, and allow you to stay on the 
earth, but if you are changeable, and look 
different from your customary appearance, 
and come up to the cage in a frightened 
manner, they pipe you off and give you the 

165 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ha, ha! See? Now we will go home and 
get acquainted.’’ 

“Well, pa,” said I, looking him straight 
in the eye, “where are we going next?” 


166 


CHAPTER X. 

The Bad Boy Calls on the Old Groceryman 
and Gets Acquainted with his New Dog— 
Off Again to See America. 

The old groceryman was sitting in the old 
grocery one fine spring morning looking over 
his accounts, as they were written on a quire 
of brown wrapping paper with a blunt lead 
pencil, and wondering where he could go to 
collect money to pay a note that was due at 
the bank at noon on that day. He was look¬ 
ing ten years older than he did the year be¬ 
fore, when the Bad Boy had played his last 
trick on the old man, and gone abroad to 
chaperone his sick father, in a search for 
health and adventure. The old man had 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

missed the boy around the grocery, and with 
no one to keep his blood circulating, and his 
temperature occasionally soaring above the 
normal, he had failed in health, and had 
read with mixed feelings of joy, fear and re¬ 
sentment that the Bad Boy and his dad had 
arrived home, and he knew it could not be 
long before the boy would blow in, and he 
was trying to decide whether to meet the boy 
cheerfully and with a spirit of resignation, 
or to meet him with a club, whether to give 
him the glad hand, or form himself into a 
column of fours to drive him out when he 
came. 

He had accumulated a terrier dog since 
the boy went away, to be company for the 
old singed cat, to hunt rats in the cellar, and 
to watch the store nights. The dog was 
168 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

barking down cellar, and the old man went 
down the rickety stairs to see what the 
trouble was, and while he was down there 
helping the dog to tree a rat under a sack 
of potatoes, the Bad Boy slipped into the 
store, and finding the old man absent, he 
crawled under the counter, curled up on a 
cracker box, and began to snore as the old 
man came up the stairs, followed by the dog, 
with a rat in his mouth. The old man heard 
the snore, and wondered if he had been en¬ 
tertaining a tramp unawares, when the dog 
dropped the rat and rushing behind the 
counter began to growl, and grabbed the Bad 
boy by the seat of his trousers and gave him 
a good shaking, while the boy set up a yell 
that caused the plaster to fall, and the old 
man to almost faint with excitement, and he 
169 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


went to the door to call a policeman, when 
the boy kicked the dog off, and raised up 
from behind the counter, causing the old cat 
to raise her back and spit cotton, and as the 
old man saw the Bad Boy he leaned against 
the show case and a large smile came over 
his face, and he said: “Gee whiz, where did 
you get on?” 

“The porter was not in, so I turned in in 
the first lower berth I came to,” said the Bad 
Boy, as he jumped over the counter and 
grabbed the old man by the arm and shook 
his hand until it ached. “Introduce me to 
your friend, the dog, who seems to have ac¬ 
quired an appetite for pants,” and the Bad 
Boy got behind the old man and kicked at 
the dog, who was barking as though he had 
a cat on the fence. 


170 






“Dog Does Kinder Act as Though he Had Something on 


His Mind." 



































































PECK’S BAD BOY 


“Get out, Tige,” said the old man, as he 
pushed the dog away. “You have got to get 
used to this young heathen,” and he hugged 
the bright-looking, well-dressed boy as 
though he was proud of him. 

“What are good fat rats selling for now?” 
asked the boy, as his eye fell on the rat the 
terrier had brought out of the cellar. “I 
did not know you had added a meat market 
to your grocery. Now, in Paris the rat busi¬ 
ness is a very important industry, but I didn’t 
know the people ate them here. What do 
you retail them at?” 

“O, get out, I don’t sell rats,” said the old 
man, indignantly. “I got this dog for com¬ 
pany, in your place, and he has proved him¬ 
self more useful than any boy I ever saw. 
Say, come and sit down by the stove, and tell 


172 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

me all about your trip, as your letters to me 
were not very full of information. How is 
your father’s health?” 

“Dad is the healthiest man in America,” 
said the boy, as he handed the old man a 
Turkish cigarette, with a piece of cheese 
under the tobacco about half an inch from 
where the old man lighted it with a match. 
“Dad is all right, except his back. He slept 
four nights with a cork life preserver 
strapped to his back, coming over, and he 
has got curvature of the spine, but the doctor 
has strapped a board to dad’s back, and says 
when his back warps back to fit the board 
he will be sound again.” 

“Say, this is a genuine Turkish cigarette, 
isn’t it,” said the old man, as he puffed away 
at it, and blew the smoke through his nose. 
173 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


“I have always wanted to smoke a genuine, 
imported cigarette. Got a flavor something 
like a Welsh rabbit, ain’t it?” and the old 
man looked at the cigarette where the fry¬ 
ing cheese was soaking through the paper. 
“Gee but I can’t go that,” and he threw it 
away, and looked sea sick. 

“Turks always take cheese in their cigar¬ 
ettes,” said the Bad Boy. “They get a smoke 
and food at the same time. But if you feel 
sick you can go out in the back yard and I 
will wait for you.” 

“No, I will be all right,” said the old man, 
as he got up to wait on a customer. “Here, 
try a glass of my cider,” and he handed the 
boy a dirty glass half filled with cider which 
the boy drank, and then looked queer at the 
old man. 


174 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

“Tastes like it smells going through the 
oil belt in Indiana,” said the boy. “What’s 
in it?” 

“Kerosene,” said the old man. “The 
Turks like kerosene in their cider. They get 
drink and light, if they touch a match to 
their breath. Say, that makes us even. 
Now, tell me, what country did your dad 
get robbed the most in while you were 
abroad?” 

“Well, it was about a stand off,” said the 
boy, as he made a slip noose on the end of 
a piece of twine, and was trying to make a 
hitch over the bob tail of the groceryman’s 
dog, with an idea of fastening a tomato can 
to the string a little later, and turning the 
dog loose. “Do you know,” said he to the 
old man, “that I think it is wrong to cut off 
175 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


a dog’s tail, cause when you tie a tin can to 
it you feel as though you were taking ad¬ 
vantage of a cripple. 

“Well, all the countries we visited robbed 
dad of all the money he had, one way or 
another, sooner or later; even our own coun¬ 
try, when we arrived in New York, took his 
roll for duty on some little things he smug¬ 
gled, but I think the combination of robbers 
at Carlsbad stuck together and got the goods 
off dad in the most systematic manner. Some 
way they got news when we arrived, of the 
exact amount of money dad had got out of 
the bank, and before we had breakfast the 
fakers had divided it up among themselves, 
and each one knew just what was going to be 
his share, and it was just like getting a check 
from home for them. If we were going 
176 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

there again we would give the money to 
some particular faker to divide with the rest, 
and then take a few swallows of their rotten 
egg water, and get out. 

“Say, did you ever eat a piece of custard 
pie made out of stale eggs? Well, that is 
just about the same as the Carlsbad water, 
only the water is not baked with a raw crust 
on the bottom. But the doctor dad consulted 
was the peach. Dad asked him how much of 
the water he ought to drink, and the doctor 
held a counsel with himself, and said dad 
might drink all he could hold, and when 
dad asked him how much his charges were 
he said, ‘Oh, wait till you are cured.’ So 
dad thought he was not going to charge for 
his advice, but after we had drank the water 
for ten days, and dad was so weak he couldn’t 
177 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

brush the flies off his bald spot, we decided 
to go to rest cure, and when we had our 
tickets bought the doctor attached our bag¬ 
gage, and had a bill against dad for four 
hundred and sixty dollars for consultations, 
operations, advice, board and borrowed 
money, and he had a dozen witnesses to prove 
every item. Dad paid it, but we are going 
there once more with a keg of dynamite for 
that doctor. But dad thinks he got the worth 
of his money. 

“You remember before he went away he 
thought the doctors who operated on him for 
that ’pendecitus left a monkey wrench in him 
when they sewed him up. Well, after he be¬ 
gan to drink that water he found iron rust 
on the towels when he took a bath, and he 
178 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

believes the monkey wrench was sweat out of 
him. Say, does your dog like candy?” 

“O, yes, he eats a little,” said the grocery- 
man, and the boy tossed a piece of candy 
such as he gave the King of Spain, with 
cayenne pepper in it, to the dog, which 
swallowed it whole, and the old man said, 
“Now I suppose your father is cured, you 
will stay at home for awhile, and settle 
down to decent citizenship, and take an ac¬ 
tive part in the affairs of your city and state? 
Gee, but what is the matter with the dog?” 
added the old man, as the dog jumped up on 
all fours, looked cross-eyed, and tried to dig 
a hole in his stomach with his hind leg. 

“O, no, we shall never stay home much 
more,” said the Bad Boy, getting up on a 
barrel and pulling his feet up to get away 
179 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

from the dog, which was beginning to act 
queer. “You see, dad got cured all fight, 
of a few diseases that were carrying him off, 
but he has taken the ‘jumps , 5 a disease that 
is incurable. When a man has the ‘jumps 5 
he can’t stay long in one place, but his life 
after taking the disease is one continual round 
of packing up and unpacking. His literature 
is time cards and railroad guides, and his 
meals are largely taken at railroad eating 
houses, sitting on a stool, and his sleep is un¬ 
certain cat naps. Say, that dog acts as 
though the mouthful he took out of my pants 
under the counter didn’t agree with him,” 
added the boy, as the dog rolled over and 
tried to stand on his head. 

“Dog does act kinder like he had some¬ 
thing on his mind,” said the old man, as he 
180 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

got out of the dog’s way, so he could do his 
acrobatic stunt. “Where is your dad going 
next trip? Seems as though he would want 
to stay home long enough to change his 
shirt.” 

“Don’t have to change your shirt when 
you travel,” said the boy, as he slipped an 
imitation snake into the side pocket of the 
old groceryman’s sack coat. “We are going 
to see all the world, now that we have 
started in the traveling industry, but our next 
move will be chasing ourselves around our 
own native land. Say, if you have never 
been vaccinated against mad dog, you better 
take something right now, for that dog is 
mad, and in about two minutes he is going 
to begin to snap at people, and there is no 
death so terrible as death from a mad dog 
181 


/ 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

bite. Gee, but I wouldn’t be in your place 
for a million dollars.” And the boy stood 
up on the barrel, and was beginning to yell 
“mad dog,” when the old man asked what 
he could take to make him immune from the 
bite of a mad dog. 

“Eat a bottle of horseradish,” said the boy, 
as he reached over to the shelves and got a 
bottle, and pulled the cork. “Eminent 
scientists agree that horseradish is the only 
thing that will get the system in shape to 
withstand and throw off the mad dog virus,” 
and he handed the old man the bottle and 
he began to eat it, and cry, and choke, and 
the boy got down from the barrel and let 
the dog out doors, and he made a bee line 
for the lake. 

“He’s a water dog all right,” said the boy, 
182 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

and as a servant girl came in to buy some 
soap, and saw the old man eating raw horse¬ 
radish and choking and looking apoplectic, 
she asked what was the matter with the old 
man, and a boy said a mad dog just escaped 
from the store, and that the old man had 
shown signs of madness ever since; the girl 
gave a yell and rushed out into the world 
without her soap. “Let this be a lesson to 
you to be kind to dumb animals,” said the 
boy to the old man, as he finished the bottle 
of horseradish, and put his hands on his 
stomach. 

“Write to me, won’t you?” said the old 
groceryman, “and may the fiercest grizzly 
bear get you, and eat you, condemn you,” 
and the old man opened the door and pointed 
to the street. 


183 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


“Sure,” said the Bad Boy. “I will write 
you but beware of the dog. Good-bye. You 
are a good thing. Push yourself along,” and 
the Bad Boy went out to pack up for an¬ 
other journey. 


184 








1 


CHAPTER X I. 

The Bad Boy Relates the Automobile Ride 
He and Dad Took—They Sneak Out of 
Town. 

“Give me a package of your strongest 
breakfast food, and a big onion,” said the 
Bad Boy, as he came into the grocery, look¬ 
ing as weak as a fever convalescent, “and I 
want to eat the onion right now.” 

“Well, that is a combination, sure enough,” 
said the old groceryman as he wrapped a 
package of breakfast food in a paper and 
watched the boy rub half an onion on a salt 
bag, and eat it greedily. “What is the matter 
with you to look so sick, and eat raw onion 
before breakfast?” 

185 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

“Oh, it is this new-fashioned way of liv¬ 
ing that is killing little Hennery. When 
I lived at home before we used to have 
sassidge and pancakes for breakfast, roast 
meat for dinner and cold meat for supper, 
and dad was healthy as a tramp, ma could 
dance a highland fling, I could play all 
kinds 6f games and jump over a high board 
fence when anybody was chasing me. Now 
we have some kind of breakfast food three 
times a day because ma reads the advertise¬ 
ments, and dad is so weak he has to be helped 
to dress, ma goes moping around like a 
fashionable invalid, I am so tired I can’t hit 
a window with a snowball, and the dog that 
used to fight cats now wants to lay in front 
of the grate and wish he was dead. Gosh, 
but there ought to be a law that any man that 
186 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

invents a new breakfast food should be com¬ 
pelled to eat it. Gee, but that onion gives a 
man strength.” 



“Jerusalem, but You Are a Sight,” Said the Old Grocery- 
man. 

“I should think so,” said the old grocery 
man, as he took a rag and set it on fire and 
let the smoke purify the room. “But I sup- 
187 










PECK’S BAD BOY 


pose your folks are like a great many others 
who have quit eating meat on account of the 
meat trust, and are going to die in their 
tracks on health food. Is your dad going 
out to-day to get the fresh air and brace up 
for his next trip?” 

“No, dad is going to stay in the house. 
He wants ma to get his a female trained 
nurse, but ma kicks. They had a 
trained nurse for a week, once, but ma had 
one of those little electric flash-lights that 
you touch a button and it lights up the room 
like a burglar was in the house, and she used 
to get up in the night and flash the light into 
dad’s room. Dad always had nervous pros¬ 
tration after ma flashed the light, and the 
nurse fainted dead away, so ma and I are 
going to do the nursing until dad is strong 
188 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

enough to travel again, and then he and I 
skip.” 

“Where are you going first?” asked the 
old grocery man, as he opened the door to 
let the odor of onion, and burned rag out of 
the room. “What kind of treatment do the 
doctors advise to bring the old man around 
so he will be himself again?” 

“They want him to go where he can take 
baths, and gamble, and attend horse races, 
and go into fast society, and maybe have a 
fight or two so as to stir his blood, and we 
have decided to take him first to the hot 
springs and turn him loose, and we are pack¬ 
ing up now and shall go next week. They 
tell me that at the Arkansaw Hot Springs 
you can get into any kind of a scrape you 
want, and you don’t have to look around for 
189 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


trouble. It comes to you. Oh, we won’t do 
a thing down there. I broke the news to 
dad last night, and he said that was good 
enough for him, and he has packed up his 
poker chips and some marked cards he used 
to win money with from the deacons in the 
church, and he wants to go as quick as pos¬ 
sible. You will have to excuse me now, for 
I am going to take dad out in an automo¬ 
bile after breakfast to give him his first dose 
of excitement. I will make dad think that 
automobiling is a sport next to fox hunting, 
and I will drop in this afternoon and tell 
you about it,” and the bad boy took his 
breakfast food and went home. 

“Jerusalem, but you are a sight,” said the 
groceryman late in the afternoon, as the bad 
boy came in with a pair of black goggles 
190 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

on, his coat tom down the back and his pants 
ripped up the legs. “What a time you must 
have had in the automobile. Did you run 
over anybody?” 

“Everybody,” said the bad boy, a9 he 
pinned his trousers leg together with a safety 
pin. “There they go now with dad in a milk 
wagon. Say, these airships that run on the 
ground give a man all the excitement he 
needs.” 

“Hurry up and tell me about your auto¬ 
mobile ride,” said the groceryman as he 
brushed off the bad boy’s clothes with an old 
blacking brush. 

“Well, dad said he had never taken a ride 
in one of the devil wagons, though he had 
got a good deal of exercise the last year or 
two dodging them on the streets, but he said 



“Dad said, 'Good shot, 


Hennery.’ ” 








































































































WITH THE COWBOYS 

he was tickled to death to hear that I was 
an expert performer, and he would go out 
with me, and if he liked the sensation, he 
would buy one. The machine I hired was 
one of those doublets for two persons, one 
seat, you know, a runabout. It was a run¬ 
about all right. It run about eighteen miles 
in fifteen minutes. I got dad tucked in, and 
touched her on a raw spot, and we were off. 
I run her around town for a while on the 
streets that had no teams on, and dad was 
pleased. He said: 

“ ‘Hennery, I like a boy that knows some¬ 
thing about machinery, and who knows what 
dingus to touch to make his machine do a 
certain thing, and I am proud of you.’ 

“We had to go through the business part 
of town, and dad looked around at the 
193 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

people on the streets that he knew, and he 
swelled up and tried to look as though he 
owned a brewery, and told me to let her out, 
and I thought if dad could stand it to let 
her out I could, so I pulled her open just as 
one of these station fruit venders with a hand 
cart was crossing the street. The cowcatcher 
in front caught the hand cart right in the 
middle and threw it into the air and it 
rained bananas and oranges, and the dago 
came down on his head and swore in Italian, 
and dad said, ‘Good shot, Hennery/ and then 
the machine swung across the street and 
knocked the fender off a street car, and then 
I got her in the road straight and by gosh 
I couldn’t stop her. Something had got 
balled up, and the more I touched things 
the faster she went. We frightened four 
194 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

teams and had three runaways, and the air 
seemed full of horses rearing up and drivers 
yelling for us to stop. One farmer with a 



"It Rained Bananas and the Dago Came Down on Hie 
Head/’ 

load of hay would not give any of the road, 
and I guess his hay came in contact with the 
195 





PECK’S BAD BOY 

gasoline tank, for the hay took fire, his team 
ran away, and as we went over the hill I 
looked back and saw a fire engine trying to 
catch up with the red-hot load of hay, and 
the farmer had grabbed hold of a wire sign 
across the street and let the wagon run out 
from under him, and they had to take him 
down with a fire ladder. 

“We kept going faster, and dad began to 
get frightened and asked me to slow up, but 
I couldn’t. We must have got in the coun¬ 
try about eight miles, and dad was getting 
scared, and his face was just the color of 
salt pork, and he said: 

“ ‘Hennery, this excursion is going to 
wind up in a tragedy, and if I die I want 
you to have a post-mortem examination 
made, just to see if I am right about those 
196 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

doctors leaving that monkey wrench in me. 
For heaven’s sake make the machine jump 
that fence, for here comes a drove of cat¬ 
tle in the road, more’n a hundred horned 
steers, and we never can pass them alive.’ ” 
“Gee, but when I saw those cattle ahead 
and the machine running away, I tried to 
pray, and then I steered her towards an old 
rail fence that looked as though it was rot¬ 
ten, and then there was a crash, the air was 
full of rails, and dad said, ‘This is no hur¬ 
dle race,’ and we landed in a field where 
there was an old hard snow bank. She 
went up on the side, hit the frozen snow, 
turned a summersault, the gasoline tank ex¬ 
ploded and I didn’t remember anything till 
some farmers that were spreading manure 
in the field turned me over with a pitchfork 
197 



“The farmer had'grabbed hold of a wire sign across the street/’ 






















WITH THE COWBOYS 

and asked me who the old dead man was 
standing on his head in the snow bank with 
his plug hat around his neck. As soon as 
I came to I went to dad, and he was just 
coming out of a trance, and asked him if 
he didn’t think a little excitement sort of 
made the sluggish blood circulate, and he 
looked at the blood on the snow, and said 
he thought there was no doubt about the 
circulation of his blood. 

“He got up, got his hat untangled, told 
the farmers he was obliged to them for 
their courtesy and then he called me one 
side and said: 

“ ‘Hennery, this attempt on your part to 
murder me was not the success that you ex¬ 
pected, but you keep on and you will get me 
all right. Now, as a business man, I want 
199 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

to say we have got to get out of this town 
to-night or we will be arrested and sent to 
the penitentiary; besides, I will have to pay 
a thousand dollars damage at the least cal¬ 
culation. Get me a carriage for home, and 
you stay and set this machine on fire and 
skip back to town in time for the evening 
train south, and we will go where the clim¬ 
ate is more genial.’ 

“Just then the steers we saw in the road 
came into the field through the fence we 
had broken, and when the smelled the blood 
they began to paw and beller, and look like 
they would run at dad, so the farmers got 
dad into a milk wagon that was going to 
town, and when the wagon started dad was 
pouring a cup of milk on him where the 
gasoline had scorched him when it explod- 


200 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

ed, and I walked in town helping the fel¬ 
lows drive the steers, and here I am, alive 
and ready to travel at 8 p. m. 



“Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me Was 
Not the Success You Expected.” 

“If my chum comes around tell him I 
will write him from Hot Springs and give 
him the news.” 


201 










PECK’S BAD BOY 


“If that don’t beat anything I ever heard 
of,” said the old grocery man. “I have al¬ 
ways been afraid of those automobiles, and 
when one of the horns blow I go in the first 
gate, say my prayers and wait for it to go 
by and run over some one farther down the 
block. Did your dad say anything about 
buying an automobile after he came to?” 

“Yes, as I remember it, he said he would 
see me in h— first, or something like that. 
He remarked, as he got in the milk wagon, 
that every man that owned an automobile 
ought to be examined by an insanity expert 
and sent to the penitentiary for letting con¬ 
cealed weapons carry him. 

“Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad 
boy went limping out of the grocery to go 
home and tell his mother that he and dad 


202 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


had been scoring up for the good time they 
were going to have when they got out on the 
road for dad’s health. 


203 


CHAPTER XII. 

The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get 
So Gay—Dad’s Experience with the Pec- 
arries. 

“Hot Springs, Ark.—My dear old chum: 
Dad and I got here three days ago, and 
have begun to enjoy life. We didn’t leave 
home a minute too soon, as we would have 
been arrested for running over that banana 
peddler, and for arson in setting a load of 
hay on fire and destroying the farmer’s 
pants in our automobile accident. Ma 
writes that a policeman and a deputy sher¬ 
iff have camped on our front doorstep ever 
since we left, waiting for dad and I to show 
up. Dad wants me to tell you to notify the 
204 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

officers that they can go plum, as we shall 
never come back. Tell them we have gone 
to Panama, or Mexico, or any old place. 

“By the way, kid, I shall have to give 
you a little fatherly advice. When dad and 
I were at the bank getting a wad to travel 
with, I asked one of the clerks how it was 
that the bank dispensed with your services, 
after you had been there nearly a year, and 
had got your salary up to $60 a month, and 
were just becoming worth your salt. He 
said you got too fresh, that every new re¬ 
sponsibility that was put upon you caused 
your chest to swell, and that you walked 
around as though you were president of the 
bank, and that you got ashamed to carry 
your lunch to the bank, to eat it in the back 
room, but went out to a restaurant and or- 
205 


PECK'S BAD BOY 

dered the things to eat that came under the 
15-cent list, whether you liked the food or 
not, just to show off; and instead of quietly 
eating the wholesome lunch your mother 
put up for you, and being good natured, 
you ate the restaurant refuse, and got cross, 
and all for style, showing that you had got 
the big head; and that you demanded an in¬ 
crease of salary, like a walking delegate, and 
got fired, as you ought to have been; and 
now you are walking on your uppers, and 
are ashamed to look into the bank, which 
you think is going to fail because you have 
withdrawn your support. Dad arranged 
with the managers to take you back on pro¬ 
bation, so you go and report for duty just 
as though you had been off on a vacation, 
and then you try and have some sense. Dad 
206 


\ 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

says you should get to the bank before you 
are expected, and stay a little while after it is 
time to quit, and don’t watch the clock and 



“Dad Sat in the Parlor with a Widow Until the Porter Had 
to Tell Him to Cut It Out.” 

get your coat on before it strikes, and don’t 
make a center rush for the door, as though 
you were escaping from jail. Let those 
above you see that there is not enough for 


207 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

you to do, and that you are anxious to help 
all around the place. Look upon a bale of 
money just as you would look upon a bale 
of hay if you were working in a feed store, 
and don’t look covetous upon a pile of bills, 
and wonder how much there is in it, and 
think how much you could buy with it if 
it was yours. It is just a part of the busi¬ 
ness, that pile of money is, and it is not your 
place to brood over it with venom in your 
eyes, or some day you will reach out and 
take a little, and look guilty, and if they 
don’t find you out, you will take a bigger 
slice next time, and go and blow yourself 
for clothes as good as the president of the 
bank wears, and some night you will open 
a small bottle of wine, and put your thumbs 
in the arm-holes of your vest, and imagine 
208 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

you are ‘it,’ and when you flash your roll to 
pay the score, the quiet man at another 
table in the saloon, who has been drinking 
pop, and whom you were sorry for, he 
looked so forlorn, will take you into the po¬ 
lice station, and they will search you, and 
you will break down and blubber, and then 
it is all off, and the next day you will be be¬ 
fore a judge, and your broken-hearted 
mother will be there trying to convince the 
judge that somebody must have put the 
money in your pocket to ruin you, some one 
jealous of your great success as a banker, but 
the judge will know how you came by the 
money, and you will go over the road, your 
mother goes to the grave, and your friends 
will say it is a pity about you. 

“Men who employ boys know that half 


209 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


of them will never amount to a tinker’s dam, 
a quarter of them will just pass muster, and 
if they can’t run the place in a year they 
will find another job, and two out of the 20 
will be what are needed in the business. 
The boy who is always looking for another 
job is the one that never finds one that suits 
him. The two boys out of the twenty will 
seem to look a little rustier each year as to 
clothes but their round, rosy faces will 
change from year to year, the jaws begin to 
show strength, the eyes get to looking through 
you, and the forehead seems to expand as 
the brain gets to working. 

“The successful boys out of the bunch re¬ 
mind me of the automatic repeating rifle, 
that you put ten cartridges in and pull the 
trigger and shoot ten times with your eyes 


210 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

shut, if you want to, and it hits where you 
point it. Every time an employer pulls the 
trigger on a successful business boy, and a 



“I Got a Gambler to Look Cross at Dad.” 

good idea of business is fired, the recoil puts 
a new idea into the chamber, and you pull 
again, and so on until the magazine of the 


211 






PECK’S BAD BOY 

brainy boy is emptied, when you load him 
up again, and he is ready for business, and 
the employer wouldn’t be without him, and 
would not go back to the old-fashioned one- 
idea boy, that goes off half-cocked when not 
pointed at anything in particular, and whose 
ideas get stuck in the barrel and have to be 
pulled out with a wormer, and primed with 
borrowed powder, and touched off by the 
neighbors, most of whom get powder in 
their eyes, unless they look the other way 
when the useless employe goes off, for any¬ 
thing in the world. So, chum, you go back 
to the bank and become an automatic re¬ 
peater in business, with ideas to distribute 
to others, instead of borrowing ideas, anH 
you will own the bank some day. 

“Now, kid, you don’t want to ge ped- 


212 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

dling this around among the neighbors, but 
dad and I are having the time of our lives 
here, and since dad has begun to get ac¬ 
quainted with the ladies here at the hotel, 
and the millionaire sports, he is getting 
well, and acts like old times. He sat in the 
parlor of the hotel with a widow the first 
night until the porter had to tell him to cut 
it out. Say, I got asleep three or four times 
on a lounge in the parlor, waiting for dad to 
get to the ‘continued in our next’ in talking 
with that widow about his wealth, and his 
loneliness since ma died. He said he didn’J: 
know what he was worth, because he didn’t 
pay any attention to any of his bonds and 
securities, except his Standard Oil stock, be¬ 
cause the dividends on that stock came regu¬ 
lar and increased a little every quarter. 

213 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


Gee, but I wanted to tell her that all the in¬ 
terest he had in Standard Oil was a gallon 
kerosene can with a potato stuck in the spout, 
and when we went to bed I told him that 
woman’s husband was behind the door of 
the parlor all the time listening, and he had 
a gun in his hip pocket, and would call him 
out for a duel the next morning, sure. Dad 
didn’t sleep good that night, and the next 
morning I got a gambler to look cross at 
dad and size him up ,and dad didn’t eat any 
breakfast. After breakfast I had the hotel 
stenographer write a challenge to dad, and 
demand satisfaction for alienating the af¬ 
fections of his wife, and dad began to get 
weak in the knees. He showed me the chal¬ 
lenge, and I told him the only way to do in 
this climate was to walk around and punch 
214 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

his cane on the floor, and look mad, and talk 
loud, and the challenger would know he was 
a fiery fighter, and would apologize, and 
dad walked around town and through the 
hotel office most of the day, fairly frothing 
at the mouth, and he thinks he has scared 
the challenger away, and, as the woman is 
gone, dad thinks he is a hero. 

“But the worst thing has happened and it 
will take a week to grow new skin on dad’s 
legs. He got acquainted with a bunch of 
men who were bear hunters and sports, and 
they talked of the bear shooting in Arkansas, 
and dad told about how he had killed tigers, 
lions, elephants and things until they 
thought he was great. Dad never saw one 
of those animals except in a menagerie, but 
when they suggested that he go with them 

215 



"Dad was up on a limb praying, his gun on the ground and his 

coattails chewed by the wild pigs.” 











































































































WITH THE COWBOYS 

on a bear hunt, he bit like a bass, and the 
whole bunch went off in a buckboard one 
morning with guns, lunches, hounds, bot¬ 
tles, and all kinds of ammunition. They 
didn’t let me go but when the crowd came 
back about midnight, and they carried dad 
up to his room, and sent for a doctor, one of 
the horse race men who went along told me 
all about it. 

“He said they went out in a canebrake 
and stationed dad on a runway for bear, and 
put in the dogs about a mile away in the 
swamp, and they left him there for five 
hours, and when they went to where he was, 
there was a drove of wild hogs, or peccaries, 
under a tree, and dad was up, on a limb 
praying, his gun on the ground; his coat was 
chewed by the wild pigs, and the wild ani- 
217 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

mals were jumping up to eat his shoes. 
The fellows hid behind trees and listened 
to dad confess his sins, and pray, and prom¬ 
ise to do better, and be a good man, and 
when a wild pig would gnash his teeth and 
make a jump at him, he would talk swear 
words at the pig, and then he would 1 put up 
his hands and ask forgiveness, and promise 
to lead a different life, and say what a fool 
he was to be off down here in the sunny 
south being eaten alive by wild hogs, when 
he ought to be home enjoying religion. Just 
as dad was about to die there on the limb of 
a shagbark hickory, the fellows behind the 
trees touched off a small dynamite cartridge 
and threw it under the tree, and when it ex¬ 
ploded the wild hogs ran away, dad fell off 
the limb, and he was rescued. He was a 
218 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

sight, for sure, when they brought him to 
the hotel; his clothes were tom off, his stom¬ 
ach lacerated, and when he was stuck to¬ 
gether with plasters, and I was alone with 
him, he said he was as good a bear hunter 
as ever came down the pike, but he never 
worked in a slaughter house, and didn’t 
know anything about slaughtering pigs, and 
besides, if he ever got out again, and able to 
use a gun, he would put that bunch of hunt¬ 
ers that took him out in the canbrakes under 
the sod. He said while he sat up the tree 
praying for strength to endure the ordeal he 
had a revelation that there wasn’t a bear 
within a hundred miles, and that those fel¬ 
lows had the hogs trained to scare visitors to 
Hot Springs, so they could be easy to rob. 
He said one fellow borrowed $50 of him to 


21Q 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

pay into the state treasury for wear and tear 
on the wild hogs. Well, dad had forgotten 
about the monkey-wrench in his system, and 
I guess we are going to enjoy ourselves here 
in the old-fashioned way. Yours all right, 
“Hennery.” 


220 


CHAPTER XIII. 

The Bad Boy and His Dad Have Trouble 
with a New Breakfast Food—Dad Rides 
a Bucking Broncho. 

San Antonio, Texas.—My Dear Chum: 
Dad and I left Hot Springs because the man 
who kept the hotel where we stopped got 
prejudiced against me. I suppose I did 
carry the thing a little too far. You see dad 
has got into this breakfast food habit, and 
reads all the advertisements that describe 
new inventions of breakfast food, and he has 
got himself so worked up over the bran mash 
that he is losing appetite for anything sub¬ 
stantial, and he is getting weak and nutty. 
Ma told me when I went away with dad 


221 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

that she wanted me to try my best to break 
dad of the breakfast food habit, and I prom¬ 
ised to do it. Say, kid, if you ever expect 
to succeed in life, you have got to establish 
a reputation for keeping your promises. 
Truth is mighty, and when anybody can de¬ 
pend upon a boy to do as he agrees his for¬ 
tune is made. Dad saw a new breakfast 
food advertised in an eastern magazine, and 
as the hotel people only kept thirty or forty 
kinds of mockingbird food for guests, dad 
made me go out to the groceries and round 
up the new kind. I brought a box to the 
table at breakfast, and dad fell over himself 
to fill his saucer, and then he offered some 
to eight boarders that sat at our table. Dad 
had been bragging for a week about how he 
had adopted the breakfast food fad, first 


222 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


for his health, and then to get even with the 
beef trust. He had convinced the boarders at 
our table that it was a patriotic duty of every 



"Hennery, I Feel as Though Your Dad Was not Very Long 
for This World.” 

citizen to shut down on eating meat until 
the criminal meat trust was ruined. 

“The breakfast food I put up on dad was 
223 




PECK’S BAD BOY 

some pulverized cork that I got at a grocery 
out of a barrel of California grapes. It 
looked exactly like other breakfast food, but 
you’d a died to see dad and several invalid 
Southern colonels, and two women who were 
at the table, pour cream on that pulverized 
cork, and springle sugar on it, and try to get 
the pulverized cork to soak up the cream, 
but the particles of cork floated on top of the 
cream, and acted alive. An old confederate 
colonel, who had called dad a dam yankee 
ever since we had been there, and always act¬ 
ed as though he was on the point of drawing a 
gun, took the first mouthful, and after chew¬ 
ing it a while he swallowed as though his 
throat was sore, but he got it down, and or¬ 
dered a cocktail, and looked mad at dad. 
Dad noticed that the others were having dif- 
224 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

ficulty in masticating the food, and so he 
pitched in and ate his food and said it was 
the finest he ever tasted, but the rest of the 
crowd only took a spoonful or two, and et 
fruit. One woman who is there to be cured 
of the habit of betting on the races, got the 
cork in amongst her false teeth and it 
squeaked when she chewed, like pulling a 
cork out of a beer bottle. They all seemed 
to want to please dad, and so they munched 
away at the cork, until the woman with the 
false teeth had to leave the table, then a col¬ 
onel went out, and then all quit the table 
except dad and I, and by that time dad felt 
as though he had swallowed a life preserver, 
and he said to me: 

“ ‘Hennery, either the baths or the cli¬ 
mate, or something has upset me, and I feel 
225 


PECK'S BAD BOY 


as though your dad was not very long for 
this world. Before I die I want you to con¬ 
fess to me what that stuff is that I have been 
eating, and I can die in peaceP 

“I told him that he had wanted a light 
breakfast, and I though there was nothing 
quite so light as cork, and that he was full 
clear to the muzzle with pulverized cork, 
and he couldn’t sink any more when he took 
a bath. Dad turned pale and we went out 
in the office and found that all the people 
who sat at our table, and ate breakfast food 
were in the hands of doctors, and dad went 
in the room with them, and each had a doc¬ 
tor, and how they got it out of them I don’t 
know, as I was busy organizing a strike 
among the bell boys. I told them they could 
double their wages by striking at exactly at 
226 



D«d Among the Cowboy*. 





















PECK’S BAD BOY 

ten o’clock, when all the boarders wanted 
cocktails sent to their rooms. 

“They struck all right, and the breakfast 
food people had all got pumped out, and 
then it came my turn. Dad gave me a lick¬ 
ing, the boarders kicked at me, the landlord 
ordered me out of the house, and the strik¬ 
ing bell boys who had their places filled in 
ten minutes, chased me all over town, and 
when I got back to the hotel dad had bought 
tickets to San Antonio, because the doctor 
told him to get out on the prairies and take 
horseback exercise to shake the pulverized 
cork and the monkey-wrench out of his sys¬ 
tem, and everybody threw stones at the buss 
that we rode to the depot in. Gosh, but I 
hate a town where genius has no chance 
against the mob element. The worst was 
228 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

that woman with the false teeth, because she 
lost them somewhere, and had to hold her 
handkerchief over her mouth while she 
called me names when the porter took me 
by the collar and the pants and flung me into 
the buss. Dad told the porter, when he 
handed out the regular ‘tip,’ that he would 
have made it large if the porter had taken 
an axe to me. Dad is getting so funny he 
almost makes me laugh. 

“Well, kid, we arrived here next day, and 
got acclimated before night. Dad bought a 
wide gray cowboy hat, with a leather strap 
for a band, and began to pose as a regular 
old rough rider, and told everybody at the 
hotel that he was going to buy a ranch, and 
run for congress. Everybody here is will¬ 
ing a northern man should buy a ranch, but 
229 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


when he talks about running for Congress 
they look sassy at him, but dad can look just 
as sassy as anybody here. He told all around 
that he was a cavalry veteran of the war, 
and wanted to get a horse to ride that would 
stir up his patriotic instincts and his liver, 
and all his insides, and a real kind man 
steered dad to a livery stable, and I knew 
by the way the natives winked at each other 
that they were going to let him have a horse 
that would jounce him all right. 

“They saddled up a real nice pony for me, 
but when they led out the horse for dad I 
knew that trouble was coming. The horse 
was round shouldered on the back, and when 
they put the saddle on the horse humped up 
and coughed most pitiful, and when they 
fastened the cinch the horse groaned and 
230 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


the crowd all laughed. A negro boy asked me 
if my old man was ever on a horse before, 
and when I told him that dad had eaten 



horses in the army, the boy said that horse 
would eat him, ’cause he was a bucker from 
Buckersville in the western part of the state. 




PECK’S BAD BOY 


I told dad the horse was a dangerous bucker, 
but he tipped his hat on one side and said 
he had broken more bucking bronchos than 
those Texas livery men ever saw. Dad bor¬ 
rowed a pair of these Mexican spurs with a 
wheel in them as big as a silver dollar, and 
the men held the horse by the bridle while 
dad got on, and I must say he got on like 
he knew how. He asked which was the 
road to Houston, and we started out of town. 

“Well, sir, I have been in a good many 
runaways, and I was filling a soda fountain 
once when it exploded, and I have been on 
a toboggan when it run into a cow, and I 
have been to a church sociable when a boy 
turned some rats loose, and a terrier went 
after them right among the women, but I 
never was so paralyzed as I was to see dad 
232 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

and that horse try to stay together. The first 
two miles out of town the horse walked, and 
acted as though it was going to die, and my 
pony would get away ahead and have to 
wait for dad and the camel to come up. 
Dad was mad because they gave him such 
a slow horse. 

“ ‘What are those things on your heels 
for? 5 I says to dad. ‘Why don’t you run the 
spokes into his slats? 5 I said, just to be so¬ 
ciable. 

“ ‘Never you mind me, 5 says dad. ‘After 
I have looked at the scenery a while I will 
open the throttle on this dromedary, and we 
will go and visit the Pyramids. 5 

“I was a little ahead and I did not catch 
dad in the act of kicking open the throttle, 
but I heard something that sounded like a 
233 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

freight train wreck, and dad and the horse 
went by me like a horse race, only that horse 
was not on the ground half the time, and 
he didn’t go straight ahead, but just low¬ 
ered his head between his legs and jumped 
in the air and came down stifflegged and 
then jumped sideways, and changed ends 
and did it all over again, all over the prairie, 
and dad was a sight. His eyes stuck out, 
and his teeth rattled, and every time the 
horse came down on his feet dad seemed to 
get shorter, as though his spine was being 
telescoped up into his hat. I think dad 
would have fallen off the first jump, only 
he had rammed the spurs in amongst the 
horse’s ribs, and couldn’t get them out. Gee, 
but you never saw such actions, unless you 
have seen a horse go plum crazy. The horse 
234 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

kept giving dad new fancy side steps, and 
jumps until dad yelled to me to get a gun 
and shoot him or the horse, and he didn’t 



care which. I yelled to dad to loosen up 
on the bridle, and let the horse run length¬ 
ways instead of sideways, and I guess he did, 
235 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


for the horse lit out for some musquite trees 
and before I could get there the horse had 
run under a limb and scraped dad off, and 
when I got there dad was lying under a 
tree, trying to pray and swear all to wonst, 
and his spurs were all blood and hair, and 
things a horse wears on the inside of his- 
self, and the horse was standing not far 
away, eating grass, and looking at dad. If 
dad had had his revolver along he would 
have killed the horse, but the horse seemed 
to know he had been fooling with an un¬ 
armed man. I got dad righted up, and he 
rode my pony to town, and I had to lead 
the bucking horse, and he eat some of the 
cloth out of my pants. 

“Say, this is a bully place down here; just 
as quiet and sunshiny as can be, only dad is 
236 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

in a hospital for a week or so, having opera¬ 
tions on where the horse let him drop once 
in a while on the saddle, and the livery man 
made dad buy the horse ’cause he said dad 
had ripped his sides out with the spurs. 
Dad says we will have a picnic when he 
gets out of the hospital. He is going to buy 
some dynamite and take the horse out on the 
prairie and blow him up. Dad is so fond 
of dumb animals. I got your letter about 
your being in love. Gee, but you can’t af¬ 
ford it on your salary. 

“Yours quite truly, 

“Hennery.” 


237 


CHAPTER XIV. 

The Bad Boy and his Dad Return from 
Texas—The Boy Tells the Groceryman 
About the Excitement at San Antonio. 

The old groceryman sat on an up-turned 
half bushel measure in front of the store dry¬ 
ing his old-fashioned boots. As he fried the 
soles in front of the red hot stove, there 
was an odor of burnt leather, but he did not 
notice it, as the other odors natural to the 
dirty old grocery seemed to be in the ma¬ 
jority. The door opened quietly and the old 
man got up to wait on a possible customer, 
when the bad boy rushed in and dropped 
on the floor the queerest animal the old man 
and the cat had ever seen. The cat got up 
238 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

on the counter on a pile of brown wrapping 
paper, curved its back and purmeyowed, 
and the strange animal jumped into a half 
barrel of dried apples and began to dig with 
all four feet, as though to make a bed to 
lie in. 

“Take that animalcule, or whatever it is, 
out of them apples,” said the old grocery- 
man, picking up a fire-poker. “What is it, 
and where did it come from, and when did 
you get back, and how is your pa, and why 
didn’t you stay away, and what do you want 
here anyway?” and the old man eyed the ani¬ 
mal and the bad boy, expecting to be bitten 
by one and bilked by the other. 

“That’s a prairie dog from Texas, if you 
are not posted in ornicothology,” said the 
boy, as he took the prairie dog up and put 


239 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


him on the counter near the cat. “Dad is 
all right, only we were driven out of Texas 
by the board of health.” 

“I told that pirate chum of yours when 
he read me your letter, that you would last 
in Texas just about a week, and that you 
would be shipped home in a box. They are 
not as tolerant with public nuisances down 
south as we are here. But what did you do 
there to get the board of health after you?” 
and the old man pushed the cat’s back down 
level, and held her tail so she couldn’t eat 
the prairie dog. 

“Well, sir, it was the condemnedest out¬ 
rage that ever was,” said the boy, as he 
gave the prairie dog some crackers and 
cheese. “You see, dad told me I could pick 
up some pet animals while I was in Texas, 
240 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

and I got quite a collection while dad was 
in the hospital. Here is one in my pocket,” 
and the boy took a horned toad out of his 



pocket, about as big as a soft-shelled crab, 
and put it in the old groceryman’s hand. 
“Condemn you, don’t you put a poison- 


241 





PECK’S BAD BOY 

ous reptile in my hand,” said the old man, 
as he dropped the ugly-looking toad on the 
floor, and got behind the show case, while 
the boy laughed fit to kill. “Now tell your 
story and vamose, by ginger, or I will ring 
for the patrol wagon. You would murder a 
man in his own house, and laugh at his 
spasms.” 

“O, get out, that toad and this prairie dog 
are as harmless as your old cat there,” said 
the boy, as he watched the old man tremble 
as though he had jim-jams. “I have got a 
tarantula and a diamond-back rattlesnake 
that will pizen you, though. I’ll tell you 
about our getting fired out of Texas, if you 
will stand still a minute. You see, I had 
my collection of pets in my room at the 
hotel, and I had the bell boys bribed, and 
24 2 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

the chambermaid would only come in our 
room while I was there to watch the pets. 
The night dad got back from the hospital, 
where he went to grow some new bones and 
things on his insides, after he rode the buck¬ 
ing broncho, a man got me the prettiest lit¬ 
tle animal you ever saw, sort of white and 
black, about the size of a cat, and I took it 
to the room and put it under the bed in a 
box the man gave me. Dad had gone to 
bed, and was snoring so you could cut it 
with a knife.” 

“Say, you knew that animal was a skunk 
all the time, now tell me, didn’t you,” said 
the old groceryman. “You was a fool to 
take it, when you knew what a skunk will 
do” 

“Yes, I thought it was a skunk, all right,” 
243 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


said the boy, “but the man told me the ani¬ 
mal had been vaccinated, and wouldn’t ever 
make any trouble for any one, and he would 



“Dad Heard Something at Night and Rose Up In Bed.” 

warrant it. I thought a warranted skunk 
was all right, and so I went to bed in a cot 
next to dad’s bed, I guess it was about day- 
244 





WITH THE COWBOYS 

light when skunks want to suck eggs, that 
he began to scratch the box, and squeak, and 
I was afraid it would wake dad up, so I 
reached down and took off the cover of the 
box. From that very identical moment the 
trouble began. Dad heard something in the 
room and he rose up in bed and the animal 
sat on the foot of the bed and looked at dad. 
Dad said ‘scat,’ and threw a pillow at my 
pet, and then all was chaos. I never exactly 
smelled chaos, but I know it when I smell it. 
O, O, but you’d a dide to see dad. He turned 
blue and green, and said, ‘Hennery, some¬ 
one has opened a jack pot, call for the po¬ 
lice!’ I rushed for the indicator where you 
ring for bell boys, and cocktails, and things, 
and touched all the buttons, and then got in 
bed and pulled a quilt over my head, and 
245 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

dad went into a closet, where my snakes and 
things were, and the vaccinated skunk kept 
on doing the same as he did to dad, and I 
though I should die. Dad heard my snake 
rattle hisself in the box, and he stepped on 
my prairie dog and yelled murder, and he 
got into my box of horned toads, and my 
young badger scratched dad’s bare feet, and 
a young eagle I had began to screech, and 
dad began to have a fit. He said the air 
seemed fixed, and he opened the window, 
and sat on the window sill in his night shirt, 
and a fireman came up a ladder from the out¬ 
side and turned the hose on dad, then the 
police came and broke in the door, and the 
landlord was along, and the porter, and all 
the chambermaids, and everybody. I had 
turned in all the alarms there were, and 
246 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

everybody came quick. The skunk met the 
policemen halfway, and saluted them as po¬ 
lite as could be, and they fell back for re- 



“Dad Stepped on My Prairie Dog and Yelled Murder.” 

inforcements; dad got into his pants and 
yelled that he was stabbed, and I don’t know 
what didn’t happen. Finally the police¬ 
men got my skunk under a blanket and 
247 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

walked on him, and he was squashed, but, 
by gosh, they can never use that blanket 
again, and I told ’em so.” 

“It’s a wonder they didn’t put a blanket 
over you and kill you too,” said the old gro¬ 
cery man, as he moved away from the 
horned toad, which the boy had placed on 
the counter. “What did they do to you 
then? What way did your dad explain it? 
How long did you remain at the hotel after 
that?” 

“We didn’t stay hardly any after that,” 
said the boy, as he pushed the prairie dog 
along the counter toward the groceryman’s 
cat, hoping to get them to fighting. “The 
landlord said we dam yankees were too 
strenuous for his climate, and if we didn’t 
get out of the house in fifteen minutes he 
248 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

would get a gun and see about it, and he left 
two policemen to see that we got away. Dad 
tried to argue the question with the land- 



“We Left Under Escort of the Police.” 

lord, after all the windows had been opened 
in the house. He said he had come to Tex¬ 
as for a quiet life, to get away from the cli- 


249 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

mate of the north, but he had no idea any 
landlord would turn animals into a gentle¬ 
man’s room, and he would sue for damages; 
but the bluff did not work, and we left San 
Antonio on a freight train, under escort of 
the police, and the board of health. Say, 
that freight train smelled like it had a hot 
box, but nobody suspected us. When we got 
most to New Orleans dad said, ‘Hennery, I 
hope this will be a lesson to you,’ and I told 
him two more such lessons would kill his lit¬ 
tle boy dead.” 

“What did you do with your clothes?” 
said the groceryman, as he snuffed around, 
as though he thought he could smell some¬ 
thing. 

“O, we bought new clothes in New Or¬ 
leans, and let our old ones out of the window 
250 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

of a hotel with a rope. A man picked them 
up, and they sent him to the quarantine for 
smallpox patients. O, we came out all 
right, but it was a close call. Say, I bet this 
prairie dog can lick your cat in a holy min¬ 
ute,” and the boy pushed the dog against the 
cat, said “sik em,” and the cat scratched the 
dog, the dog yelled and bit the cat, the cat 
run up the shelves, over the canned goods, 
and tipped over some bottles of pickles, and 
the old groceryman got crazy, while the boy 
took his prairie dog under his arm, and his 
horned toad in his hand and started to go 
out. 

“I’ll drop in some day and have some fun 
with you,” says the boy. 

“If you do I will stab you with a cheese 
knife,” said the groceryman as he picked up 
the broken glass. 


251 


CHAPTER XV. 

The Bad Boy’s Joke with a Stuffed Rattle¬ 
snake—He Tells the Old Groceryman 
About his Dad’s Morbid Appetite. 

The old groceryman was sitting on the 
counter, with his legs stretched lengthwise, 
his heels resting on a sack of flour, and his 
back against a pile of wrapping paper, his 
eyes closed, his pipe gone out, and the ashes 
sifting from it on the cat that was asleep in 
his lap. He was waiting for a customer to 
come in and buy something to start the day’s 
business. He had sprinkled the floor and 
swept the dirt up in a corner, and he was 
sleepy. There was a crash in front of the 
door, a barrel of axe handles and garden 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

tools had been tipped over on the sidewalk, 
the door opened with a jerk and closed with 
a slam, and the bad boy came in with a long 
paper bax, perforated with holes, slammed 
it on the counter beside the groceryman’s 
legs, and yelled: 

“Wake up, Rip Van Winkle, the day of 
judgment has come, and you are still buried. 
You get a move on you or the procession 
will go of! and leave you. Say, are you 
afraid of rattlesnakes?” and the bad boy 
shook the paper box, when an enormous rat¬ 
tle came from within, as though a snake had 
shaken its tail good and plenty. 

“Great Scott, boy, I believe you have got 
a rattlesnake in that box,” and he jumped 
off the counter and grabbed an iron fire 
poker, while the boy got out his knife to cut 
253 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

the string on the box. “Now, lookahere, I 
am suffering from nervous prostration, and 
a snake turned loose in this store would set¬ 
tle it with me. I am at your mercy, but by 
the holy smoke, if I am bitten by that snake 
I will kill you and your old snake. Now 
take that box out of here,” and the old man 
picked up a hatchet and got behind a bar¬ 
rel. 

“Well, wouldn’t that skin you,” said the 
bad boy, as he sharpened his knife on a piece 
of old cheese, and felt of the edge. “Here 
you have been telling me for years what a 
brave man you were, and how you were not 
afraid of anything that wore hair, and now 
you have fits because a little five-foot rattle¬ 
snake, with only ten rattles on, makes a 
formal call on you. Gee, but you are a 
254 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

squaw. Why, there is no danger in the bite 
of a rattlesnake, since science has taken the 
matter up. All you got to do, when a snake 
bites you and you begin to turn black, is to 
drink a couple of quarts of whisky, and bind 
a poultice of limberg cheese on the wound, 
and go to bed for a week or ten days, and 
you come out all right,” and the bad boy be¬ 
gan to cut the string. 

“Now, let up until I wait on these cus¬ 
tomers,” said the old man, as he went to the 
door and let in a committee of women who 
were to buy some supplies for a church so¬ 
ciable. The women lined up on each side 
of the store, looking at the canned things on 
the shelves, and the old man was trying to 
be polite, when the bad boy opened the box 
and laid on the floor a stuffed rattlesnake 
255 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

that was as natural as life, and touched a rat¬ 
tle box in his pocket, and the trouble began. 
The women saw the snake curled up, ready 
to spring, and they all went through the door 
at once, tipping over everything that was 
loose, and screaming, while the old man, 
when he saw the snake, got into the front 
show window and trembled and yelled for 
the police. A policeman rushed in the store 
and when he saw the snake he backed out of 
the door, and the bad boy sat down on a 
box and began to eat some raisins out of a 
box, as though he was not particularly inter¬ 
ested in the commotion. 

“Arrest that boy with the snake,” said the 
groceryman. 

“Come out of that wid your menagerie,” 
said the policeman, shaking his club. 

256 





"Arrett That Boy with the Rattle.nake,” Said the Grocery- 

man. 









PECK’S BAD BOY 


“Come in and get the snake if you want 
it,” said the boy. “I don’t want it any more, 
anyway,” and he took the stuffed snake up 
by the head and laid it across his lap, and 
began to shake the rattles, and laugh at the 
groceryman and the policeman, and the 
crowd that had collected in front of the store. 
The policeman came in laughing, and the 
old groceryman crawled out of the show 
window, and all breathed free again, and 
finally the policeman went and drove the 
crowd away, and went on his beat again, aft¬ 
er shaking his club at the boy; the grocery- 
man, the snake and the cat remained in the 
store. The groceryman took a swig out of a 
bottle of whisky, to settle his nerves, and the 
boy took up his snake and pushed it to- 
258 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

wards the cat, which ran up a stepladder and 
yowled. 

“Do you know, I kind of like you,” said 
the old groceryman, as he went up behind 
the bad boy and took him by the throat, “and 
I think it would be a great thing for the 
community if I should just choke you to 
death. You are worse than a mad dog, and 
you are just ruining my business.” 

“I will give you just ten seconds to take 
you hand off my neck,” said the bad boy, 
pulling out a dollar watch, “and when the 
time is up, and you have not let loose of me, 
I will turn loose a couple of live snakes I 
have in my pocket, and some tartantulas, and 
you will probably be bitten and swell up 
like a poisoned pup, and die under the coun¬ 
ter.” 


259 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


“All right, let’s be friends,” said the old 
man, as he let go of the bad boy. “If your 
parents and the rest of the community can 
stand having you around, alive, probably it 
is my duty to be a martvr, and stand my 
share, but you are very trying to the nerves. 
By the way, put that confounded stuffed 
snake in the ice box, and sit down here and 
tell me something. I saw your father on the 
street yesterday, and he is a sight. His stom¬ 
ach is twice as big around as it was, and he 
looks troubled. What has got into him?” 

“Well, I’ll tell you, dad has got what they 
call a morbid appetite. Whatever you do, 
old skate, don’t you ever get a morbid appe¬ 
tite.” 

“What is a morbid appetite?” asked the 
old man, as he peeled a banana and began 
26b 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


to eat it. “I can always eat anything that 
is not tied down, but I don’t know about this 
morbid business.” 

“Scientists say a morbid appetite is one 
that don’t know when it has got enough. 
Dad likes good things, but he wants all 
there is on the table. Now, at New Orleans, 
before we came home, dad and I went in 
a restaurant to get some oysters, and you 
know the oysters there are the biggest in the 
world. When we got there dad was hun¬ 
gry, and the thought of raw oysters on the 
half shell made him morbid. He had a blue 
point appetite, and ordered four dozen on 
the half shell, for himself, and one dozen 
for me. Well, you would have dropped 
dead in your tracks if you had been there. 
Six waiters brought on the five dozen oys- 
261 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ters, and each oyster was as big as a pie 
plate. Six dozen oysters would cover this 
floor from the door to the ice box. Dad al¬ 
most fainted when he saw them, but his 
pride was at stake, and he made up his mind 
if he didn’t eat them all the waiters would 
think he was a tenderfoot, and so he started 
in. The first oyster was as big as a calf’s 
liver, and nobody but a sword swallower 
could ever have got it down. Dad cut one 
oyster into quarters, and got away with it, 
and after a while he murdered another, and 
after he had eaten three he wanted to go 
home and leave them. Then is the time his 
little boy got in his work. I told dad that 
if he didn’t eat all the oysters the waiters 
and the people would mob him, that it was 
a deadly offense to order oysters and not eat 
262 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

them, and that they would probably kill us 
both before we got out of the place. He 
said, ‘Hennery, I don’t like oysters like I 



used to, and it seems tp me I couldn’t eat an¬ 
other one to save my life, but if, as you say, 
we are in a country where a man’s life is 
263 



PECK’S BAD BOY 


held so cheaply, by the great horn spoons, 
I will eat every oyster in the house, and the 
Lord have mercy on me.’ I told him that 
was about the size of it, and he would eat or 
die, and maybe he would die anyway, and 
just then a wicked-looking negro with a big 
oyster knife came to the table and looked 
ugly at dad and said, ‘Have another dozen?’ 
and dad said, ‘Yes,’ and then he began to 
eat as though his life depended on it, and I 
could hear the great wads of oysters strike 
with a dull thud on exposed places inside 
of dad, and before he got up from the table 
he had eaten them all, and he told the man 
we would be in again to lunch after awhile. 
Dad is tlftTbravest man I ever saw, and 
don’t you forget it. He would have come 
out all right, I suppose, and lived, if it 
264 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

hadn’t been for his devilish morbid appe¬ 
tite for travel and adventure. Quick as we 
got out of the oyster place dad wanted to 
take a steamboat ride down the river to the 
Eades Jetties at the mouth of the river, and 
we went on board, and had a nice ride down 
to the mouth. After we had looked over 
the jetties where Eades made an artificial 
canal big enough for the largest ocean 
steamers to come up to New Orleans, the 
passengers wanted the captain to run the 
boat outside the bar* into the blue ocean, 
where the waves come from. Gee, but I 
hope I may live long enough to forget the 
ride. We hadn’t got a boat’s length outside 
the bar before the beat began to roll and 
toss, and I held on to dad’s hand, and wished 
I was dead. I told him my little tummy 
265 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

ached, and I wanted a lemon. Dad said 
my little tummy, with its three oysters in it, 
was not worth mentioning, and told me to 
look at him. Talk about your Mount Pelee, 
and your Vesuvius, those volcanoes were 
tame and uninteresting, compared to dad, 
leaning over the railing, and shouting words 
at the sharks in the water. Why, he just 
doubled up like a jack knife, one minute, 
and then straightened up like an elephant 
standing on its hind legs in a circus, the next 
minute, and he kept saying, ‘Ye-up,’ and all 
the passengers said ‘poor man.’ I told them 
he was not so poor, for he owned a brewery 
at home. Dad finally went to sleep with 
his arm and head over the rail, and his body 
hanging limp, down on deck. The boat 
turned around and went back into the mouth 
266 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

of the river, and the passengers were thanking 
the captain for giving them such a lovely ride, 
when I thought I would wake dad up, and 
so I touched him on the shoulder and asked 
him if he didn’t want a few dozen more raw 
oysters, and he yelled murder, and began to 
have hydrophobia again, and hump himself. 
You know the way people do when they are 
dissatisfied with the medicine the doctor 
gives. Well, we got back to New Orleans^ 
and dad took a hack to the hotel, and told 
the driver not to pass any saloon where there 
were oyster shells on the sidewalk. We 
came home next day. Well, I guess I will 
get my snake out of the ice box, and go home 
and comfort dad. But wait a minute till that 
Irishman puts that chunk of ice in the ice 
box, and see if he notices the snake.” Just 
267 


PECK'S BAD BOY 


then there was a sound as if a house had 
fallen, a two hundred pound cake of ice 
struck the floor, and the Irishman came run¬ 
ning through the grocery with his ice tongs 
waving, and yelling, “There’s a rattlesnake 
in yer ice box, mister, and ye can go to h—1 
for yer ice.” The groceryman looked at the 
boy, and the boy looked at the groceryman, 
the cat looked at both, the boy took his snake 
under his arm and went out, and the old man 
said: 

“Well, you are the limit. Call again, and 
bring an anaconda, and a man-eating tiger,” 
and he went and scraped up the ice. 


268 


CHAPTER XVI. 

The Bad Boy Tells the Story of the Bears in 
Yellowstone Park and How Brave Dad 
Was. 

The old groceryman was down on his 
knees, with a wet coth, swabbing up some¬ 
thing from the floor with one hand, while 
he held his nose with the other, his back to¬ 
ward the door, when suddenly the door 
opened with a bank, striking the old man in 
the back, knocking him over and landing 
him with his head in a basket of strictly fresh 
eggs, breaking at least a dozen of them, and 
filling the air with an odor that was unmis¬ 
takable; and the bad boy followed the door 
into the grocery. 


269 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

“What’s your notion of taking a nap, with 
a basket of stale eggs for a pillow,” said the 
bad boy, as he took the old man by the arm 
and raised him up, and looked at him with 
a grin that was tantalizing. “What is it, 
sewer gas? My, but the board of health 
won’t do a thing to you if the inspector hap¬ 
pens in here. Those eggs must have been 
mislaid by a hen that had a diseased mind,” 
and the bad boy took a bottle of cologne out 
of the show case and began to sprinkle the 
floor, and squirted some of it on the old man’s 
clothes. 

“Say, do you know I bought those eggs 
of a man dressed like a farmer, who came in 
here yesterday with his pants in his boots, 
and smelling as though he had just come out 
of his cow stable?” said the old groceryman, 
270 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

as he took a piece of coffee sack and wiped 
yellow egg off his whiskers. “And yet they 
are old enough to attend caucuses, I tell you 
that you have got to watch a farmer the 
same as you do a crook, or he will get the 
best of you. And to think I sold four dozen 
of those eggs to a church sociable commit¬ 
tee that is going to make ice cream for a 
celebration to-night. But what in thun¬ 
der do you come in here for, like a tobog- 
gin, and knock me all over the floor, into 
eggs, when you could come in gently and 
save a fellow’s life; and me a sick man, too. 
Ever since that explosion, when we tried to 
see how they blow up battleships, I have 
had nervous prostration, and I am just about 
sick of this condemned foolishness. I like 
to keep posted on current events, and want 
271 



Landed With His Head In a Basket of Strictly Fresh Eggs. 
























WITH THE COWBOYS 

to learn how things are going on outside in 
the world, and I realize that for an old man 
to associate with a bright boy like you keeps 
him young, but, by ginger, when I think how 
you have done me up several times, I some¬ 
times think I better pick out a boy that is 
not so strenuous, so you can tell your pa I 
rather he wouldn’t trade here any more, for 
him to keep you away from here. It is hard 
on me, I know, but life is dear to all of us, 
and the life insurance company that I am 
contributing to has notified me that if I 
don’t quit having you around they will can¬ 
cel my policy. Now, you may say farewell, 
and get out of here forever, and I will try 
and pull along with the cat, and such boys 
as come in here to be sociable. Go on now,” 
and the old groceryman threw the eggs out 
273 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


in the alley, and washed his whiskers at the 
sink. 

“Oh, I guess not,” said the boy, as he sat 
down on a tin cracker box and began to eat 
figs out of a box. “I know something about 
the law myself, and if you drive me away, 
you could be arrested for breach of promise, 
and arson, and you would go to the peni¬ 
tentiary. It was all I could do to make the 
police believe you didn’t set this old shebang 
afire to get the insurance, and my being here 
has drawn more custom to your store than 
the quality of your goods would warrant. 
No, sir, I stay right here, and advise with 
you, and keep you out of trouble. If I went 
home and told dad what you said he would 
fall in a fit, and would sue you for damages 
for ruining my reputation, if he didn’t come 
274 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

over here with a club and take it out of your 
hide. Dad can stand a good many things, 
but when anybody insults one of our family, 
dad gets violent, and he had rather kill a 
man than eat. You read about their find¬ 
ing the body of a man in an alley, with his 
head crushed? Well, I don’t want to say 
anything, but it is rumored that dad was 
seen near that alley the night before, and 
that man chased me once for throwing snow 
balls at him. We move in good society, and 
are looked upon as good citizens, but dad’s 
temper gets worse every year. Can I stay 
around here more or less, or do I have to 
go out into the world, branded as a criminal, 
because an old fool fell into a basket of his 
own eggs? Say, now, answer up quick,” and 
the bad boy sharpened a match with a big 
275 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

dirk knife and picked fig seeds out of his 
teeth. 

“Oh, sugar, no; you don’t need to go,” 
said the old groceryman, as he came up to 
the boy, wiping the soapsuds off, and trying 
to smile. “I was only joshing you, and, hon¬ 
estly, I enjoy you. Life is a dreary burden 
when you are away. Somehow I have got 
so my blood gets thick, and my appetite fails, 
when you are away from town, and when 
you play some low down trick on me, while 
I seem mad at the time, it does me good, 
starts the circulation, and when you go away 
I seem a new man, and laugh, and feel like 
I had been off on a vacation, fishing, or 
something. It was a great mistake that I 
did not have a family of boys to keep me 
mad part of the time, because a man that 
276 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

never has anything to make him mad is no 
good. I envy your dad in having you 
around constantly to keep his blood in cir¬ 
culation. I suppose you are responsible for 
his being, at his age, as spry as a boy. He 
told me when he and you got back from 
Yellowstone park last summer that the trip 
did him a world of good, and that he got 
so he could climb a tree—just shin right up 
like a cat, and that you were the bravest boy 
he ever saw, said that you would fight a 
bear as quick as eat. Such a boy I am proud 
to call my friend. What was it about your 
fighting bears, single-handed, with no wea¬ 
pon but empty tomato cans? You ought to 
be in the history books. Your dad said 
bravery run in the family.” 

“Oh, get out. Did dad tell you about that 
277 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

bear story?” said the bad boy, as he sharp¬ 
ened his knife on his boot. “Well, you’d a 
dide right there, if you could have seen dad. 



“You Ought to Have Seen Dad's Short Legs Carry Him 
to a Tree.” 

He is one of these men that is brave sort of 
intermittent, like folks have fever. Half 
the time he is a darn coward, but when you 
don’t expect it, for instance when the pan- 


278 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

cakes are burned, or the steak is raw, and 
his dyspepsia seems to work just right, he 
will flare up and sass the cook, and I don’t 
know of anything braver than that; but or¬ 
dinarily he is meek as a lam. I think the 
stomach has a good deal to do with a man’s 
bravery. You take a soldier in battle, and 
if he is hungry he is full of fight, but you 
fill him up with baked beans and things and 
he is willing to postpone a fight, and he don’t 
care whether there is any fight at all or not. 
I think the trip through Yellowstone park 
took the tar out of dad. Those geysers 
throwing up hot water, apoarently right out 
of the hot place the preachers tell about, 
seemed to set him to thinking that may be 
he had got nearer h—1, on a railroad pass, 
than he had ever expected to get. He told 
279 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

me, one day, when we stood beside old 
Faithful geyser, and the hot water belched 
up into the air a hundred feet, that all it 
wanted was for the lid to be taken off, and 
h—1 would be yawning right there, and he 
was going to try to lead a different life, and 
if he ever got out of that park alive he should 
go home and join every church in town, and 
he should advise ministers to get the sinners 
to take a trip to the park, if they wanted to 
work religion into them. Dad would wake 
up in the night, at the hotels in the park, 
when a geyser went off suddenly, and groan, 
and cross himself, as he had seen religious 
people do, and tell me that in a few days 
more we would be safe out of the d—n 
place, and you would never catch him in it 
again. 


280 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


“Well, there is one hotel where a lot of 
bears come out of the woods in the evening, 
to eat the garbage that is thrown out from 
the hotel. They are wild bears, all right, 
but they have got so tame that they come 
right near folks, and don’t do anything but 
eat garbage and growl, and fight each other. 
The cook told me about it, and said there 
was no danger, ’cause you could take a club 
and scare them into the woods. 

“We got to the hotel in the afternoon, and 
dad went to our room to say his prayers, and 
take a nap, and had his supper taken to the 
room, and he was so scared at the awful sur¬ 
roundings in the park that he asked a bless¬ 
ing on the supper, though it was the bum- 
mest supper I ever struck. After dark I told 
dad we better go out and take a walk and 
281 


PECK’S BAD BOY 


inspect the scenery, ’cause it was all in the 
bill, and if you got a bum supper and did¬ 
n’t get the scenery you were losing money 



“I Studied the Bears for Awhile and Let Dad Yell for 
the Police.” 

on the deal. I saw the man emptying the 
garbage and I knew the bears would be get¬ 
ting in their work pretty soon, so I took dad 
282 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

and we walked away off, and he talked about 
how God had prepared that park as a warn¬ 
ing to sinners of what was to come, and I 
knew his system was sort of running down, 
and I knew he needed excitement, a shock 
or something to make a reaction, so I steered 
him around by the garbage pile. 

“Say, before he knew it we were right in 
the midst of about nine bears, grizzlies, cin¬ 
namon bears, black bears, and all of them 
raised up and said, ‘Whoof!’ and they 
growled, and, by gosh, just as quick as I 
could run this knife into your liver, I missed 
dad. He just yelled: ‘Hennery’ this is the 
limit, and here is where your poor old dad 
sprints for tall timber,’ and he made for a 
tree, and I yelled: ‘Hurry up, dad!’ and he 
said: ‘I ain’t walking, am I?’ and you ought 


28 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

to have seen his short legs carry him to the 
tree, and help him skin up it. I have seen 
squirrels climb trees, when a dog was after 
them, but they were slow compared to dad. 
When he got up to a limb he yelled to me 
to come on up, as he wanted to give me a 
few last instructions about settling his estate, 
but I told him I was going to play I was 
Daniel in the lion’s den, so I studied the 
bears for a while and let dad yell for the 
police, and then I picked up an armful of 
tomato cans and made a rush for the bears, 
and yelled and threw cans at them, and 
pretty soon every bear went off into the 
woods, growling and scrapping with each oth¬ 
er, and I told dad to come down and I would 
save him at the risk of my life. Dad came 
down as quick as he went up, and I took his 
284 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

arm and led him to the hotel, and when we 
got to the room he would have collapsed, only 
I gave him a big drink of whiskey, and then 
he braced up and said: ‘Hennery, when it 
comes to big game, you and I are the won¬ 
ders of the world. You are brave, and I 
am discreet, and we make a team hard to 
beat.’ I told dad he covered himself with 
glory, but that he left most of his pants on 
the tree, but he said he didn’t care for a 
few pants when he had a boy that was the 
bravest that ever came down the pike. When 
we got home alive he didn’t join the church, 
but he gave me a gold watch. Well, I’ll 
have to depart,” and the bad boy went out 
and left the old groceryman thinking of the 
hereafter. 


CHAPTER XVII. 

The Bad Boy and the Groceryman Illustrate 
the Russia-Japanese War—The Bad Boy 
Tells About Dad’s Efforts to Raise Hair 
by the “Sunshine” Method. 

The old groceryman had a war map 
spread out on the counter, and for an hour 
he had stood up in front of it, reading a 
morning paper, with his thumb on Port Ar¬ 
thur, his fingers covering the positions occu¬ 
pied by the Japanese and Russian forces in 
Manchuria, and his face working worse than 
the face of the Czar eating a caviar sand¬ 
wich and ordering troops to the far east, at 
the same time shying at dynamite bombs of 
nihilists. There was a crash in front of the 
286 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

grocery and the old man jumped behind a 
barrel, thinking Port Arthur had been blown 
up, and the Russian fleet torpedoed. 

“Hello, Matsuma, you young monkey,” 
said the old man, as the bad boy burst the 
door open and rushed in with a shovel at 
shoulder arms, and came to “present arms” 
in front of the old man, who came from be¬ 
hind the barrel and acknowledged the salute. 
“Say, now honest did you put that chunk of 
ice in the stove the day you skipped out last?” 

“Sure Mike!” said the boy, as he ran the 
shovel under the cat that was sleeping by 
the stove, and tossed her into a barrel of 
dried apples. “I wanted to demonstrate to 
you, old Michaelovitski, the condition of 
things at Vladivostok, where you candle-eat¬ 
ing Russians are bottled up in the ice, and 
287 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

where we Japanese are going to make you 
put on your skates and get away to Siberia. 
What are you doing with the map of the seat 
of war?” 



Came to Present Arms. 


“Oh, I was only trying to figure out the 
plan of campaign, and find out where the 
Japanese would go to when they are licked,” 
said the old man. “This thing is worrying 
288 










WITH THE COWBOYS 

me. I want to see Russia win, and I think 
our government ought to send to them all 
the embalmed beef we had left from the war 
with Spain, but if we did you monkey Jap¬ 
anese would capture it, and have a military 
funeral over it, and go on eating fish and 
rice. When this country was in trouble, in 
1864, the Russians sent a fleet of warships to 
New York and notified all Europe to stand 
back and look pleasant, and by the great 
horn spoons, I am going to stand by Russia 
or bust. I would like to be over there at 
Port Arthur and witness an explosion of a 
torpedo under something. Egad, but I glory 
in the smell of gunpowder. Now, say, here 
is Port Arthur, by this barrel of dried apples, 
and there is Mushapata, by the ax handle 
barrel, see?” 


289 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

“Well, you and I are just alike,” said the 
boy. “Let’s have a sham battle, right here 
in the grocery. Get down that can of pow¬ 
der.” 

“’Taint against the law, is it?” said the 
old man as he handed down a tin cannister 
of powder. “I want excitement, and valua¬ 
ble information, but I don’t want to unduly 
excite the neighbors.” 

“Oh, don’t worry about the neighbors,” 
said the boy, as he poured a little powder un¬ 
der the barrel of dried apples. “Now, as 
you say, this is Port Arthur. This chest of 
Oolong tea represents a Japanese cruiser out¬ 
side the harbor. This box of codfish rep¬ 
resents a Russian fort, see? and the stove rep¬ 
resents a Russian cruiser. This barrel of ax 
handles is the Russian army, entrenched be- 
290 


WITH THE COWBOYS 


hind the bag of coffee. Now, we put a lit¬ 
tle powder under all of them, and lay a train 
from one to the other, and now you get out 
a few of those giant firecrackers you had 
left over from last Fourth of July, and a 
Roman candle, and we can illustrate the 
whole business so Alexovitch and Ito would 
take to the woods.” 

“No danger, is there?” said the old gro- 
ceryman, as he brought out the fireworks, 
looking as happy and interested as the bad 
boy did. “I want to post myself on war in 
the far east, but I don’t want to do anything 
that would occasion remark.” 

“Oh, remark nothing,” said the boy, as he 
fixed a firecracker under a barrel of rice, 
another under a tin can of soda crackers, and 
got the Roman candle ready to touch off at 


291 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

the stove. “It will not make any more fuss 
than taking a flash-light photograph. Just 
a piff-s-s-sis—boom—and there your are, full 
of information.” 

“Well, let-er-go-Gallagher,” said the old 
man, sort of reckless like, as he got behind 
the cheese box. “Gol darn the expense, 
when you want to illustrate your ideas of 
war.” 

The boy lit the Roman candle, got behind 
a barrel of potatoes and turned the splutter¬ 
ing Roman candle on the giant firecracker, 
under the stove, and when he saw the fuse of 
the firecracker was lighted, he turned the 
torch on the powder under the barrel of dried 
apples, and in a second everything went kit¬ 
ing; the barrel of dried apples with the cat 
in it went up to the ceiling, the stove was 
292 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

blown over the counter, the cheese box and 
the old groceryman went with a crash to the 
back end of the store, the front windows blew 



When the Fireworks Went Off in the Grocery. 

out on the sidewalk, the store was full of 
smoke, the old man rushed out the back door 
with his whiskers singed and yelled “Fire!” 
while the bad boy fell out the front door 
293 



PECK’S BAD BOY 

with his eye winkers gone, and his hair 
singed, the cat got out with no hair to brag 
on, and before they could breathe twice the 
fire department came clattering up to a hy¬ 
drant and soon turned the hose inside the 
grocery. There was not very much fire, and 
after tipping over every barrel and box that 
had not been blown skyhigh the firemen 
gave one last look at the inside of the grocery, 
one last squirt at the burned and singed cat, 
that had crawled into a bag of cinnamon on 
the top shelf, and they went away, leaving 
the doors and windows open; the crowd dis¬ 
persed, and the bad boy went in the front 
door; peered around under the counter, 
pulled the cork out of a bottle of olive oil 
and began to anoint himself where he had 
been scorched. Hearing a shuffling of arc- 
294 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

tic overshoes filled with water, in the back 
shed, and a still small voice, saying, “Well, 
I’ll be condemned,” he looked up and saw 
the red face of the old groceryman peeking 
in the back door. 

“Come in, Alexandroviski, and rub some 
of this sweet oil on your countenance, and 
put some kerosene on your head, where the 
hair was. Gee! but you are a sight! Don’t 
you go out anywhere and let a horse see you, 
or he will run away.” 

“Have all the forts and warships come 
down yet?” said the old man, looking up to¬ 
ward the ceiling, holding up his elbow to 
ward off any possible descending barrel or 
stove lid. “I now realize the truth of General 
Sherman’s remark that war is hell. Gosh! 
how it smarts where the skin is burnt off. 
295 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

Give me some of that salad oil,” and the old 
man sopped the oil on his face and head, 
and the boy rubbed his lips and ears, and 
they looked at each other and tried to smile 
two cracked, and wrinkled and scorched 
smiles, across the counter at each other. 
“Now, you little Japanese monkey, I hope 
you are satisfied, after you have wrecked my 
store, and fitted me fer the hospital, and I 
want you to get out of here, and never come 
back. By ginger, I know when I have got 
enough war. They can settle that affair at 
Mukden, or Holoyahoo, or any old place. 
I wash my hands of the whole business. Git, 
you Spitz. What did you pour so much 
powder around the floor for? All I wanted 
was a little innocent illustration of the hor¬ 
rors of war, not an explosion.” 

296 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

“That’s what I wanted, too,” said the boy, 
as he looked up on the top shelf at the cat, 
that was licking, herself where the hair used 
to be. “How did I know that powder would 
burn so quick? Say, you are unreasonable. 
Do you think I will go off and leave you to 
die here under the counter of bloodpoison¬ 
ing, like a dog that has eaten a loaded sau¬ 
sage? Never! I am going to nurse you 
through this thing, and bring you out as 
good as new. I know how you feel towards 
me. Dad felt the same way towards me, 
down in Florida, the time he got skun. You 
old people don’t seem to appreciate a boy 
that tries to teach you useful nollig.” 

“What about your dad getting skun in 
Florida? I never heard about it,” said the 
297 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

old groceryman, as he took a hand mirror 
and looked at his burned face. 

“Why, that was when we first got down 
there,” said the boy, looking at the old man 
and laughing. “Gee! but you would make 
a boy laugh if his lips were chapped. You 
look like a greased pig at a barbecue. Well, 
when we struck Florida, and dad got so he 
could assimilate high balls, and eat oranges 
off the trees, like a giraf, he said he wanted 
to go fishing, and get tanned up, so we hired 
a boat and I rowed while dad fished. I ast 
him why he didn’t try that new prescription 
to raise hair on his bald head that I read of 
in a magazine, to go bareheaded in the sun. 
He ast me if anybody ever raised any hair 
on a bald head that way, and I told him about 
Mr. Rockefeller, who had only one hair on 
298 



“Dad Said if Rockefeller Could Raise Hair by the Sunshine 
Method, He Could.” 









PECK’S BAD BOY 

his head, and he played golf bareheaded and 
in two weeks had to have his hair cut with 
a lawn mower, ’cause it made his brain ache. 
Dad said if Rockefeller could raise hair by 
the sunshine method he could, and he threw 
his straw hat overboard, and began to fish 
in the sun for fish and hair. Well, you’d a 
dide to see dad’s head after the blisters be¬ 
gan to raise. First, he thought the blisters 
was hair, but when we got back to the hotel 
and he looked in a glass, he see it wasn’t 
hair worth a cent. His head and face looked 
like one of these hippopotamuses, and dad 
was mad. If I could have got dad in a side 
show I could have made a barrel of money, 
but he won’t never make a show of hisself, 
not even to make money, he is so proud. 
There is more proud flesh on dad than there 
300 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

is on any man I ever nursed. Well, dad ast 
me what was good for blisters, and I told 
him lime juice was the best thing, so he sent 
me to get some limes. They are a little sour 
thing, like a lemon, and I told him to cut 
one in two and soak the juice on his head 
and face, and I went to supper, ’cause dad 
looked so disreputable he wouldn’t go to 
the dining room. When I bought the limes 
the man gave me a green persimmon, and of 
course dad got the persimmon instead of the 
lime, and when I came back to our room aft¬ 
er supper dad was in bed, yelling for a doc¬ 
tor. Say, you know how a persimmon puck¬ 
ers your mouth up when you eat it? Well, 
dad had just sopped himself with persim¬ 
mon juice, and his head was puckered up 
like the hide of an elephant, and his face and 
301 


PECK’S BAD BOY 

cheeks were drawn around sideways, and 
wrinkled so I was scart. I gave him a mir¬ 
ror to look at hisself, and when he got one 
look he said: ‘Hennery, it is all over with 
your dad, you. might just as well call in a 
lawyer to take my measure for a will, and 
an undertaker to fill me with stuff so I will 
keep till they get me home by express, with 
handles on. What was that you called that 
fruit I sopped my head with?’ and he groaned 
like he was at a revival. Well, I told him 
he had used the persimmon instead of the 
lime juice I told him to, and that I would 
cure him, so I got a cake of dog soap and 
laundered dad, and put on stuff to take the 
swelling out, and the next day he began to 
notice things, it would have been all right 
only a chambermaid told somebody the mean 
302 


WITH THE COWBOYS 

old man with the pretty boy in 471 had the 
smallpox, and that settled it. You know in 
a hotel they are offal sensitive about small¬ 
pox, ’cause all the boarders will leave if a 
man has a pimple on hisself, so they made 
dad and I go into quarantine in a hen house 
for a week, and dad said it was all my fault 
trying to get him to raise hair like Rocke¬ 
feller. Well, I must go home and explain 
to ma how I lost my hair and eye-winkers. 
If I was in your place I would take a lit¬ 
tle tar and put it on where your hair was 
before the explosion,” and the bad boy went 
out, leaving the old groceryman drawing 
some tar out of the barrel, on to a piece of 
brown paper, and dabbling it on his head 
with his finger. 

END. 


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